Smoke Screen By Kyle Mills

Preliminary rating: 4.8Q

Thirty-two-year-old Trevor Barnett has inadvertently become the lead
spokesman for the tobacco industry just as it's on the verge of
extinction, facing a $200 billion lawsuit that it will be unable to
appeal.  America's tobacco companies react by doing the unthinkable
-closing their plants and recalling their products.

The message is clear: no more cigarettes until the industry is given
iron-clad protection from the courts.

As the economy falters and chaos takes hold, Trevor finds himself the
target of enraged smokers, gun-toting smugglers, and a government that
has been cut off from one of its largest sources of revenue.  Soon it
becomes apparent that this had always been his function to take the
brunt of the backlash and shield the men in power from the maelstrom
they'd created.  As he is slowly abandoned by an industry that his own
ancestors helped to create, Trevor begins to fight back.

Kyle Mills continues to explore the controversial subjects that have
won him legions of fans and accolades around the globe.  Fascinating in
concept, rich in characters, and broad in appeal, Smoke Screen has all
the trademark flair of his previous novels and proves that he is one of
the most accomplished writers working in the genre today.

Also by Kyle Mills

Rising Phoenix Storming Heaven

Free Fall

Burn Factor

Sphere of Influence

KYLE MILLS

Smoke Screen

Hodder & Stoughton

Copyright 2003 by Kyle Mills

First published in the United States in 2003 by Penguin Putnam

First published in Great" Britain in 2003 by Hodder & Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline

The right of Kyle Mills to be identified as the Author of the Work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

1 3 5 7 9 10

4 2

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on
the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library

Hardback ISBN 0340 73428 0 Trade Papcrbiwh ISDN 0340 fB439 Printed and
bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St.  Ives plc

Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline

338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Chris Huther and Francie Makris for their help in researching
a jurisdictional issue that was well over my head.  Any legal errors
are mine.  Also, apologies to Chris for making fun of him in the text.
I couldn't resist, and I suspect that he and I are the only people in
the world who will get the joke.

As always, thanks to my wife, Kim, and my parents, Darrell and Elaine,
for their comments throughout the writing process.  Also to my editor,
Rob Mc-Mahon, who was instrumental in helping me tighten and focus the
book.

Laura Liner for her help on Sphere of Influence and for putting me in
touch with the right people on this book.

Special thanks to D."  without whom I don't think I could have pulled
this off.  Her willingness to thoroughly answer endless questions about
the tobacco industry and her patience when I couldn't understand those
answers went beyond generous.

More persons are, on the whole, humbugged by believing nothing than by
believing too much.

P.T. BARNUM

Smoke Screen

PROLOGUE

My dog suddenly decided to abandon her role as ottoman and sprang to
her feet with enough force to almost flip me backward in my chair.  She
tensed and faced the television, concentrating with puppy-like
enthusiasm on the man speaking through it.  I watched too, but a little
less passionately.

"The new surgeon general's report is very simply above reproach!  We're
talking about research techniques that have been in the process of
refinement for over half a century now.  We're talking about the most
up-to-date scientific and statistical methods.  We're talking about
some of the top minds in the field ..."

"Wait for it..  .," I said as a playful growl escaped my aging Great
Pyrenees.  She crept forward a few inches but then stopped.

"The fact that Big Tobacco would even bother to send someone here to
try to refute these findings is absurd and insulting.  But not exactly
surprising, I suppose."

The man speaking was Angus Scalia, the tobacco industry's most rabid
critic and a fairly difficult person to describe: Picture a
sixty-year-old, four-hundred-pound John Lennon suffering from male
pattern baldness and trying to hide it with a ponytail comb-over. Dress
him in clothing purchased exclusively at Texas outlet malls and you've
got a pretty close approximation.

"There is no longer any doubt that cigarette smoking is the greatest
threat to public health since the Black Death decimated Europe in the
fourteenth century."

"Good one," I said aloud, unable to fend off the mental image of those
old woodcuts depicting a personified Death hovering over crying
children as they watched their fathers' sore-covered bodies stacked
onto a wheelbarrow.

While I'd never admit it publicly, I couldn't help admiring Scalia's
unwavering conviction.  For him, it wasn't about politics or getting
his face on TV.  This guy really, truly, believed.  He was a man who
could actually make a coherent argument that all things evil in the
modern world were in some way connected to Big Tobacco.  That kind of
single-mindedness had a strange purity to it that I found
fascinating.

With Scalia slightly out of breath and obviously in need of a rest, the
camera cut to a gray-haired man in his early fifties nodding with a
convincing facsimile of sincerity.  I couldn't immediately remember his
name something foreign sounding that started with one of those letters
that didn't get much play in the English language: Q?  X? V?

Viasanto.  That was it.  Craig Viasanto.

"Let me tell you a story, Mr.  Scalia ...," he started.

My dog lunged, but I saw it coming and managed to stop her by wedging a
sock-covered foot beneath her collar.

"Many years ago, R. J. Reynolds decided he wanted to expand out of the
chewing-tobacco market and into cigarettes.  But he didn't want to get
involved in selling something that might be dangerous, so he had three
independent labs do studies on the health ramifications of smoking. All
three responded that there was no danger.  None at all.  The point I'm
trying to make is that we should be careful about putting too much
faith in 'scientific studies'.  It used to be that vitamin C was the
great cure-all, but now the medical community is suggesting that it may
cause genetic damage.  And remember when hormone replacement was the
best thing ever to happen to postmenopausal women?  Now we're hearing
about thirty percent increases in heart attack and breast cancer
rates."

Calmly earnest, impeccably groomed, and carefully studied, Craig
Viasanto couldn't have been a more striking counterpoint to Angus
Scalia.  Based on his Botoxlike ability to say absolutely anything with
a straight face, he'd recently been made the tobacco industry's top
spokesman.  I, of course, had protested his promotion by firing off a
five-page memo outlining the benefits of hiring Pam Anderson as the
industry's primary spokesperson.  I, for one, was prepared to believe
anything Ms.  Anderson told me.

Surprisingly, I never received a response to my eminently reasonable
and exhaustively researched proposal.

"It would be naive of us to believe that politics doesn't have a
profound effect on science," Viasanto continued.  "I could name a
thousand examples, going as far back as the Catholic Church's
insistence that the sun revolved around the Earth."

I gave him a little golf clap for that one, but my dog was still
straining at her collar and I had to keep hold of the chair to avoid
being dragged onto the floor.  The reference was subtle, but clearly
alluded to a priest who just yesterday had admitted to molesting no
fewer than thirty young boys in his care.  The media was all over it,
and Viasanto was obviously not above using this revelation to channel
the public's ire in another direction.

"It's the height of fashion right now to blame the tobacco industry for
everything from lung cancer to the budget deficit.  We're quickly
becoming the twenty-first-century version of McCarthy's Communists."

He'd gone a little overboard there and couldn't quite sell it.  You had
to applaud the effort, though.

"Let me tell you a story, Mr.  Viasanto," Scalia said as the camera
refocused on him.  Rage had contorted his thick face to the point that
it seemed to be in the process of swallowing the tiny round glasses
perched on his nose.

"After World War I, a soldier who had been provided cigarettes a
previously obscure product by the U.S. Army died of lung cancer. Before
performing an autopsy, one of the foremost doctors of the time called
all his colleagues and invited them.  He said, and I quote, "You'll
never see another one of these again."  That's how rare this disease
used to be."

"Whoops," I said aloud.

"A perfect example of what I'm talking about," Viasanto said,
immediately pouncing on Scalia's rare misstep.  "No one ever mentions
the explosion of industrial pollution and the shift in the population
from rural to urban areas when we talk about lung ailments."

Scalia knew he'd walke'd into that one, and his bolo tie suddenly
seemed dangerously tight.  "This is completely ridiculous!  You know
smoking is dangerous as well as I do!  Here's another quote for you:
"We agree that smoking is addictive and causes disease in smokers." One
of your own vice presidents said that!"

Before Viasanto could respond, the camera cut to the show's host and he
announced a brief commercial break.  My dog relaxed a little.

"Why do I watch these things?"  I said aloud.

All they did was make me question the value of the human race and, more
particularly, my own precarious position in that race.  Besides, it was
six-thirty and I knew for a fact that there was a rerun of Three's
Company on channel 283.

The news program flashed back on and I pretended to ignore it, though
for whose benefit I'm not sure.  Mine, I suppose.

"Mr.  Scalia," the host resumed, "you've been quoted as saying that the
class-action suit in Montana is the beginning of the end for the
tobacco industry.  But is that realistic?  We're talking about an
industry that helped found this country and now accounts for almost one
percent of American employment."

A little background is necessary:

A two-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar class-action lawsuit had been
filed in Montana alleging (surprise) that the tobacco industry was
selling a deadly product, that it was encouraging people to use that
product, and that the dangers of the habit had been, and continued to
be, played down and lied about.  All completely true.  In fact, it
wouldn't be hard to mistake the complaint for a tobacco company's
mission statement.

To be fair, though, it's a little more complicated than that.  There
are the government warnings, the highly subjective concepts of personal
responsibility and freedom, and the question of whether anyone
reasonably believes that smoking isn't killing them.

As a practical matter, though, these valid issues were sometimes
completely irrelevant to the tobacco industry's courtroom performance.
What it tended to come down to was just how pissed off the jury was.
And generally they're pretty pissed off, which is why Big Tobacco does
a lot better in front of appellate judges than it does in front of real
people.

So what was going on in Montana that had everyone so worked up?  I
mean, the jury would almost certainly award the plaintiffs the two
hundred and fifty billion and then the industry would unleash that
clever and well-coiffed legal hoard it kept penned up in its basement
and the judgment would be overturned on appeal.  It was the way of the
world.  Right?

In this case, maybe not.

Montana doesn't have a law that sets a maximum on the amount of an
appeals bond.  That means if Big Tobacco were to lose this particular
case, the companies would have to come up with the entire judgment
amount in order to file an appeal.  And contrary to popular opinion,
they just didn't have that kind of money sitting around.

The bottom line?  If a Montana jury decided to hold the tobacco
industry responsible for rain in July and then awarded more money than
the industry could bond off, that judgment would stick.  And the entire
house of cards would collapse.

"I absolutely think it's realistic," Scalia said.  "In fact, I think
it's likely.  Big Tobacco has lost its ability to control and subvert
the information available to the American people.  These companies have
finally been exposed as the despicable liars they are.  Now,
politicians know that if they take money from Tobacco and become
apologists for these murderers, their constituents see them for what
they are: whores.  Mark my words, Tom we'll see the complete implosion
of the industry in the next ten years."

The host nodded thoughtfully and turned back to Viasanto.  "Do you have
any comment on that?"

For the first time I could remember, the industry's savant of a mouth
piece looked a little lost.  "I'm sorry, Tom.  I'm not at liberty to
comment on ongoing litigation."

My dog strained forward again when Viasanto spoke and I finally let my
foot slide from beneath her collar.

"Go get him, girl!"

She barked joyfully and leaped forward, covering my TV screen with paw
prints and saliva.  The less than vicious attack lasted only a few
seconds before she exhausted herself and collapsed on the carpet for a
well-deserved nap.

I suddenly realized that I was in desperate need of a drink.  In fact,
I was in need of a bunch of drinks more than my fridge could
comfortably provide.  I pushed myself to my feet, turned off the TV,
and started for the front door.

"I'll be back in a few hours, Nicotine.  Can you hold down the fort for
a while?"

She snorted and rolled farther onto her back but didn't open her
eyes.

One.

"So DO YOU HAVE TO BE NAKED TO USE THE FOOS ball table?"

At least that's what I think she said.  The house's half-million-dollar
sound system was being pushed to its limit by one of those repetitive,
mechanical-sounding drones people slightly younger than me liked to
listen to.  I focused on her mouth as she spoke, trying to read her
lips through the smoke and chaotic lighting, but found myself
concentrating on their plump perfection instead.

I managed to turn slightly, bumping someone behind me and sending most
of his beer down my back.  It felt pretty good, so I shrugged off his
apology and looked out across a dance floor so full that it made
nonverti-cal motion completely impossible.  On the downbeats, I could
just make out some bare skin over the top of the pogoing crowd.

"I'm not really sure," I shouted loud enough for her to hear but not so
loud as to shower her with spit.  "I think it's more of a guideline."

She mulled that over for a moment.  "Why?"

Now, that was a question that demanded an answer that was probably too
long and complicated to get across in the current setting.

A hundred years ago, the house we were standing in had been the
calculatedly imposing home of a wealthy plantation owner a man who
still sat, white suit and all, in an old daguerreotype above the toilet
in one of the bathrooms.  In its heyday, the house had been filled with
European furniture, South American silver, and Chinese silk all
carefully maintained by a staff of ex-slaves who would have been well
on their way to realizing that freedom was a more ethereal concept than
they'd originally thought.  Parties, frequent and lavish, would have
been carefully planned to highlight the breeding and superiority of
guests wandering stiffly through it and to nudge upward the social
standing of the hosts.

All that was gone now, replaced by the previously mentioned sound
system, an elaborate bar constructed out of an old VW microbus, no less
than five big-screen TVs, concert lighting, and an undetermined number
of sweating, occasionally naked, twenty-somethings.  Outside, the
once-stately gardens had been replaced with a twenty-person hot tub, a
pool in the inexplicable shape of a star, and an inoperable crane that
would soon be coaxing gravity-assisted projectile vomiting from
aspiring bungee jumpers.

I shrugged as the girl and I sidestepped away from the expanding mass
on the dance floor.  I hadn't caught her name, or maybe I had and just
couldn't remember.  "I don't know.  Tradition, I guess."

She tilted her head, causing her nose ring to flash hypnotically as she
tried to decide if I was making fun of her.

I'd been trying to peg her age for the last fifteen minutes, but she
was one of those people who seemed to gain and lose years with every
change of expression.  My current best guess was that she was a few
years younger than me.  Say, twenty-eight.

"You were telling me about your trip," I yelled, trying to divert the
current flow of conversation, which would inevitably lead to questions
about the infamous owner of the house a subject to be avoided at all
costs.

"After I left MIT, I did some traveling you know, just put my bike on a
plane, went where it was cheap.  I started in Europe ... Have you ever
been to Prague?"

I shook my head.

"Beautiful city and you can hang out there for next to nothing.  I rode
across the Czech Republic "

"By yourself?"

"Yeah.  I was supposed to go with a bunch of friends, but they all got
jobs right out of school and backed out on me.  It was better, though,
you know?  I was kind of forced to dive into the local culture.  The
people were great they took me in, let me stay at their houses ... I
even slept in barns sometimes with the cows."

I grinned, probably stupidly.  "Really?  Cows?"

"Hey, don't laugh.  After a day of hammering your bike through the
rain, you'd be psyched to curl up with a cow.  They generate a lot of
heat."

"Yeah, I guess I can see how they would .. ."

"So anyway, then I hopped a train and headed up to Scandinavia.  Ever
been to Copenhagen?"

A guy in a Superman costume climbed up on a pool table and dove into
the crowd on the dance floor.  I watched him surf along on a cushion of
upturned hands and then get ejected onto the floor a few feet from
us.

"Denmark?  Huh uh."

"Nice place.  Nice people.  And everyone speaks English, which was a
good change.  But man, it's expensive.  I only stayed a few days before
I headed south again.  I spent another month just cruising around and
then shipped my bike back to my folks and headed for Asia.  Ever been
to Thailand?"

"Never."

"Really exotic.  You should try to make a trip.  Great food, super
cheap."

"Yeah, one of these days.  Hard to find the time, you know?"

"Yeah, they work you pretty hard here," she said, leaning in a little
closer to my ear.  "I've only been at the company for six months.  Kind
of hard to make the adjustment from just screwing around all the time.
What division do you work in?  I haven't seen you around ... Seems like
I would have remembered if I had."

I managed not to wince visibly when the cramped muscles at the base of
my neck spasmed.  Had that been an expression of interest?

The girl was beautiful, intelligent, looked good in a nose ring, told
jokes about Tolstoy that were actually kind of funny, and was talking
to me instead of one of the hundred other guys patrolling the area.  I
wasn't good under this kind of pressure.

She smiled, displaying a set of teeth that were well worth whatever her
parents had paid for them.  "Yeah, I definitely would have
remembered."

First impressions of me were as varied as the personalities that formed
them.  I'm just a bit over six foot four, with thick shoulders and a
narrow, well-defined waist that hasn't yet succumbed to my more-or-less
sedentary lifestyle.  It was a physique that provoked lust, envy, and
intimidation, among other things.

My light blond hair, sun-deprived skin, and teeth that were overly
white despite my best efforts to yellow them invited comparisons to
angels and Nazis in roughly equal proportions.

The bad habit I had of holding conversations and maintaining
relationships while almost never making eye contact made a few people
paint me as shy, but most complain about my arrogance.

"I, uh, don't work for the company.  I'm just friends with the owner,"
I stammered and then immediately cursed myself for being so stupid.

"Darius?  You mean you know Darius?  You're friends with him?  No
way!"

"Uh yeah.  I guess I know him okay," I said, trying to backpedal.

Actually, we'd been best friends since the fifth grade.  In fact, we'd
been inseparable enough that Darius had followed me to Chico State,
despite having nearly every Ivy League dean in the country willing to
prostitute himself in surprisingly degrading ways to lure him to one of
America's more esteemed learning institutions.

Honestly, I'd taken his willingness to drive me to California as just
another excuse for a multi state crime spree.  When we arrived
literally just hours ahead of the authorities he'd disappeared, leaving
me to wrestle my stuff out of the car and up the stairs to my dorm
room. When he'd finally reappeared, he'd lost his shirt and socks, but
gained a blanket, an alarm clock, and a full academic scholarship.

Five years later, with a total of thirty credit hours and a D average,
security had escorted him from school grounds for the last time.  So
what did he do then?  What any self-respecting college dropout would
do: Stumbled drunkenly to the bank, withdrew the money he'd earned by
skipping class and doing cutting-edge programming jobs, and started a
computer game company.  Now when God needed a loan, He called Darius.

"Is he here?"  the girl said.

I shrugged, and surprisingly the conversation moved back in my
direction.

"So if you don't work here, what do you do?"

"I'm a, uh, trustafarian."

She scrunched up her nose in away that was irresistibly cute.  "A
trustafarian?  What's a trustafarian?"

I considered my answer, sipping what was left of my warm vodka tonic to
cover up the fact that I was stalling.  As with all things, the answer
to her question was a matter of perspective ... Trustafarian
'trast-a-'far-e-an n. 1: A person who inherited his or her money in the
form of a trust, which pays said funds out in installments.  2: One who
lives off the hard work and resourcefulness of dead relatives who
weren't smart enough to blow their money on women and booze.  3: A
person who lives well but contributes nothing of value to society.  4:
A lazy, good-for-nothing leech on society who will never get anywhere
in life with that attitude ... "So you don't do anything?  Nothing at
all?"  She waved her hand around.  "You go to parties?"

I sighed inaudibly at her description of the European-Arab ideal.  In
those more civilized societies, having old money and never working a
day in your life made everyone think you were better than they were. It
was so much more complicated in America.

"I work in the family business," I said.

She nodded, actually looking interested as opposed to just trying to
wrangle the conversation back around to Darius the Great.  When she
pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, that expression of
interest faded into one of apology.

"Do you mind?"  she said, patting her pockets for a lighter.  I pulled
mine out and lit the cigarette for her.

"You want one?"  she asked.

They weren't my brand but I took one anyway, lighting it and taking a
characteristically shallow drag.

"You were telling me abe ut your family's business," she shouted.

"Was I?"

"Well, you were about to."

Oddly, I am not a liar by nature.  But I do occasionally succumb, if
the lies are white and ultimately temporary.

"We invented those little felt things that go on the bottoms of chairs
to keep them from scratching your floor."

"Felt?"

"Not felt per se just the application of felt to the legs of
furniture."

In my experience, it is virtually impossible to talk about felt for
more than three minutes.  The current record was about two and a
half.

"Who'd have thought there was a ton of money in that?"

"There's not," I said.  "Honestly, it's not a very good trust.  But
every little bit "

I fell silent when I saw the well-defined edge of the crowd on the
dance floor turn liquid and a small wave form as people briefly
retreated toward the middle and then moved back out to the edge.  I
couldn't be sure what was causing the strange disturbance, but I had a
pretty good guess.

"Every little bit what?"  I heard the girl say.  I moved closer to her
and turned toward the wall, trying to hide and block her from view at
the same time.  It was too late, though.  The volume of the music
started to decline at an almost imperceptible rate and was soon down to
a level that would allow communication at a slightly more dignified
volume.

"Programmer.  Tina.  New, right?"

Darius tended to talk like that.  Single.  Words.  Particular order?
None.  I stepped reluctantly aside and he moved in, casually smoothing
the silky brown hair hanging loosely around his shoulders.  For some
reason sheer willpower probably the blue-tinted, rectangular glasses he
loved so much hadn't been fogged by the wet heat surrounding us and he
peered over them at the girl whose name I now knew.

"Um, yeah, right...," Tina said, compulsively twisting her hair around
her index finger.  "How did you know?"

Darius put his hands out in front of him and wiggled his fingers like a
proud magician.  The music faded another subtle notch.  "I own the
company.  I know all.  I've never seen you here.  Is this your first
party?"

She nodded.

These little get-tog ethers were invitation-only, and the guest list
was one of the few things Darius didn't delegate these days.  He knew
damn well that this was her first time here and had undoubtedly not
invited her until now because he was backlogged with all the other
beautiful young employees his personnel department had amassed.

"Are you having a good time?"

"Really good!"  she said not quite gauging the new sonic environment
correctly.  The answer, or more precisely, the overly loud and nervous
delivery of it, seemed to please Darius.

"I was ... I was just talking to your friend," Tina said.  "He was
telling me about his job."  She turned to me, a little wider-eyed than
she'd been earlier, willing me to speak and make sure she didn't make a
fool of herself in front of Dari Soft President, CEO, and Svengali.

Darius's head swiveled in my direction, but his body remained squared
to Tina's.  It was hard for me to see him the way Tina did.  I'd become
accustomed to how hot he burned, but I'd experienced his initial effect
on people enough times to understand a little of what she was feeling.
I pretended to be jostled by the throng behind me and stepped into Tina
again, shoving Darius aside.

"Man, it's crazy in here," I said.  "Why don't we catch up with you
outside, Darius.  I know how much you hate crowds."

He looked at me the way my father used to when I back-talked him.  "You
trying to get rid of me, Trevor?"  We locked eyes for a moment, and I
backed up a step.

"So he was telling you about his job, huh .. .," Darius said to Tina,

glancing over at me as he spoke.  Thoughts of twisting his head off
like a bottle cap flew across my mind, but instead I just stood
there.

"Let me guess.  Porta-potties?"

I stared down at my beer-soaked feet, but I could feel Tina's eyes on
me.  I wasn't sure whether that was out of growing suspicion or the
fact that gazing upon Darius with the naked eye was difficult for some
people.  I took another shallow drag on the cigarette she'd given me.

"No?"  I heard Darius say.  "Hmm.  Electric nose hair clippers?"

No audible response from Tina, but I guessed that she was shaking her
head.

"We're not back to those little felt things you put on chairs, are
we?"

Still nothing from Tina.  Nodding, I suppose.

Darius slung an arm around my stooped shoulders and laughed, then took
a dramatic pull from the bottle of Jack Daniel's that he was rarely
without at these parties.

"So your family didn't invent those felt things?"  I heard Tina say.

You'd think I'd have devised a clever way out of these types of
situations, but for some reason I never had.

"Are you kidding?"  Darius said, giving me a friendly squeeze.
"Trevor's family practically invented the tobacco industry in this
country."

And there it was.

I dared a quick peek and, as expected, she was looking down at the
cigarette in her hand.

The next few seconds would be critical.  In my experience, nine out
often young, healthy smokers halfheartedly supported the industry that
provided them with such a pleasurable, relaxing, weight-controlling,
image-enhancing product.  The other one acted as though they'd met
their future murderer.

"Another liar from the tobacco industry," Tina said, dropping her
cigarette into what was left of my drink.  Darius and I watched her
push her way through the crowd and finally disappear though the doors
that led to the pool.

"Bitch doesn't have much of a sense of humor, does she?"  He had an
expression of what could only be described as anesthetized pain on his
face.  I frowned.

"What's that look for?"  he said, putting his bottle to my cup and
filling it, despite the fact that it still contained Tina's cigarette.
I kept my disapproving glare aimed at him, and he glared back.

"Oh, quit pouting, Trevor.  You're acting like a big baby.  She was
going to find out anyway."

He'd never looked away first in all the years I'd known him.  I finally
turned slightly and pretended to scan the crowd.

"Why don't you just come to work for me, Trev?  Chicks dig computer
programmers."  He took another belt from his bottle and his arm across
my shoulders became less an act of friendship than a means to stay
upright.

"No they don't."

"Better than tobacco industry bigwigs."

"I don't know anything about computers."

"You could bring us coffee."

He laughed until he doubled over and started coughing.  Being the
helpful soul I am, I slapped him on the back hard enough to almost
cause his knees to buckle beneath him.  He wisely moved to a safer
distance, smoothed his hair one last time, and then sped off after
Tina.

Two.

"Someone .. . Kill me."

I think I spoke the words aloud, and I think I was serious, but
wouldn't swear to it.  The gushing buzz in my ears was keeping perfect
rhythm with the peaks and valleys of pain in my head, and the North
Carolina sun flooding through the window felt burning hot.  I tried to
roll away but found that complete stillness was the only thing keeping
me from vomiting.  So I was stuck.  Trapped by my own stupidity.

The events that had left me in this sorry state came back slowly: I
remembered the crowd, the heat, the girl.  I remembered beer and vodka
and whisky.  I also had a hazy recollection of trying to set Darius on
fire with a cigarette and a glass of tequila.  I'd failed miserably,
and a hastily assembled jury of revelers sentenced me to three shots of
the surprisingly difficult to ignite fluid.  After that there was
nothing.  Zip.

How had I gotten home?

Surely I hadn't driven.  Had someone given me a ride?  A brief surge of
adrenaline tried to crowbar my skull apart.

The girl.

Maybe she'd decided to ignore the tobacco hysteria being whipped up by
the media and consider the years of cool menthol goodness I was helping
to provide her.  It took me a few minutes to retrieve her name, and by
then I had convinced myself that Tina was right there in bed next to
me.

I could almost see that nose ring of hers glimmering in the sun as she
breathed.  That had to be it.  Tina'd driven me.

Despite my certainty, I didn't move or open my eyes.  I told myself it
was because of the nausea, but the truth was I didn't want to disturb
my fantasy.  It wasn't often that I found myself lying only inches from
the perfect woman the solution to my loneliness, boredom, doubt... If I
wanted to, I could just reach out and .. .

The barely audible clicking of claws on wood started somewhere in the
house, becoming louder and more staccato as it approached.  I ignored
the sound until the mattress suddenly dipped and a wet, pizza-scented
tongue slapped me on the side of the head.  The combination of the
motion and Italian dog breath turned out to be a little more than I
could handle.  My stomach pitched into my throat and I jerked myself
into a sitting position, hoping that gravity would put my insides back
where they belonged.  I swallowed hard a few times and managed, barely,
to keep it together.  When the room stopped moving, I dared a glance
over at the other side of the bed to confirm what I really already
knew.  Tina wasn't there.

"Look what you did," I croaked.  "You scared her off."

Nicotine leaned farther onto the bed, sniffed at the jacket I was still
wearing, and grimaced as well as evolution would allow.

"Yeah, well you don't smell that good either," I said, a little too
defensively.  "You got into the fridge again, didn't you?"

She slunk away, heading for the bathroom to escape the stench of
cigarettes, sweat, and alcohol.  I slid one foot to the floor but then
thought better of it and eased myself back onto my pillow and back into
unconsciousness.

It was almost eight when my feet finally hit the floor for real.  I
grabbed an open pack of cigarettes off the nightstand, but couldn't
bring myself to light one.  I promised myself I'd double up later.

Nicotine was curled up in front of the shower doing her impression of a
big white bath mat, so I had to lean over her to turn the water on.
Lukewarm, just the way she liked it.

"Well?  What are you waiting for?"  I said, pushing the glass door open
and starting to strip.  "Go on."

Now, I don't normally shower with my dog primarily because the stall
isn't that big and sharing it with a soggy 150-pound canine left very
little room to maneuver.  But she loved the shower almost as much as
she hated it when I left her alone on Sunday night, which was
traditionally our popcorn and movie time.  And for a dog, she could
really lay on the guilt.

"You'd have liked her, Nicky," I said, during the brief scuffle in
which I gained control of the showerhead.  "She went to MIT and
traveled all over the world.  About five-six ... Almost black hair
..."

Nicotine was concentrating on trying to capture the bubbles generated
by my shampoo, leaving me with the distinct feeling that she wasn't
listening.

The truth was that she had nothing but distaste for the occasional
women I brought home mostly your typical debs and southern belles.  Not
my first choice either, but they tended to be fairly easy to chase down
and catch.

The really interesting women the ones who told jokes about Tolstoy were
so much harder to come by.  Particularly with the media bored stiff by
a quietly whimpering economy, a fizzled terrorist threat, and a
president who had turned out to be a relatively normal and honest man.
They needed a villain, and the Montana suit had reminded them that
there was one right under their noses.  From a relationship-building
standpoint, I'd have been better off changing my name to Manson.

"Never again," I said to myself with conviction that sounded good even
through a mouthful of toothpaste.  I would never again succumb to my
addiction to Darius.  In fact, I'd never see him again.  Ever.  I'd
ignore his calls.  And if he should come to my house, I'd jump out the
window and run for the swamp that was slowly reclaiming my back lawn.

I turned the shower off and stepped out, waiting for Nicotine to shake
before drying myself.  I wiped the water and dog hair from the mirror
and squinted at my reflection.  It reminded me of college back when I
let Darius do this kind of thing to me almost every night.  The
greenish skin and red eyes had been a badge of honor then a sign that
one was fully exploring everything youth had to offer.  Now I just
looked like a drunk.

Three.

The office tower was new: one of those long, straight glass jobs that
you'd walk past a hundred times in New York but that in North Carolina
looked as though it had fallen from the sky and just stuck there.  I
stood across the street, hiding in a minimart that had already been
marked for destruction and replacement by something more in keeping
with the way the neighborhood was shaping up.  My guess?  A law
office.

I pretended to be pondering the pink snack cake in my hand, but the
thought of eating it made me even dizzier than I already was.  Before I
could have one of those bursts of tequila-smelling sweat that would
hang on me the rest of the day, I moved to the soda dispenser and began
filling a cup so big that I had to use two hands to hold it.

The little store was doing a fairly brisk business.  A convex mirror
above my head displayed no less than ten distorted figures moving
through the aisles, provisioning themselves with a kind of military
efficiency: chips, Band-Aids, fizzy water, baby wipes... When the long
filling process was finished and I was armed with a full sixty-four
ounces of Coke and ice, I made my way to the cash register, nodding
solemnly at my fellow shoppers, and then escaping out into the sticky
morning.

The normal haze that hung over the South this time of year had
thickened into an overcast that promised a hard, hot rain and probably
explained the subdued mood of the mob across the street from me.  I
reckoned that there were no more than twenty protesters milling around
the broad entrance of the building I worked in, and the ones holding
signs had already covered them with clear plastic.  The typically
energetic and obvious chants utilizing every conceivable word that even
remotely rhymed with murderer had been all but silenced by the
depressing weather.

I normally avoided all this by slipping my official-sticker-covered car
into the heavily secured underground parking lot and taking the
elevator up to my office from there.  This morning, though, my car was
hopefully parked safely in Darius's driveway and not wrapped around one
of Darius's trees.  That left me with little choice but to mount a more
daring frontal assault.

I took a sip of Coke and started forward, conjuring an appropriately
angry and determined expression as I joined some of the more emphatic
critics of Terra, the oh-so-wholesome and eco-friendly sounding
corporation formed by the recent merger of three sizeable tobacco
companies, one of which was founded by my
great-great-great-grandfather.  Or was it my
great-great-great-great-grandfather?  I can never remember.  In any
event, Terra Holding Corporation was now the largest tobacco-related
corporation in the world and was considered to be the last word in
corporate evil.

As I began to break away from the group of protesters and edge toward
the elaborate glass entrance of Terra's headquarters, I heard someone
right behind me shout loud enough that I reflexively spun around and
held out my enormous Coke as a shield.  It turned out to be a
diminutive man of about fifty holding a sign reading twenty million and
counting!

"Killers!"

He seemed to be yelling at the building and not me.

I smiled weakly and gave him the thumbs-up, then turned and immediately
made a dash for the DMZ an unoccupied space between the protestors and
the security staff lined up in front of the building.  Fortunately, one
of the guards recognized me and opened the door.  I ran through to the
jeers of the protestors as they realized they'd been duped and that one
of the murdering bastards had been walking amongst them.

"Don't we have any boiling oil?"

My secretary was standing in my office with her back to me, leaning
into the window to better see the protestors below.  She was wearing
the same slightly yellowed suit she wore every Monday and the same
slightly yellowed complexion she'd worn since I'd met her.  When she
spun to face me, the centrifugal force smoothed her skin enough to
briefly make her seem younger than her actual two hundred years.

"The windows don't open," I reminded her.

She lifted her glasses from where they hung around her neck by a silver
chain and looked through them with a mix of disapproval and
disappointment.  The chain had been the only thing of value her mother
ever owned.  I can't remember how I knew that it was the only piece of
personal information I ever managed to pick up about Ms.  Davenport.

"You missed your documentation meeting with Chris."

"Car trouble," I said, not expanding on the fact that the trouble was I
couldn't find it.

"I rescheduled for ten."

"Fine."

She walked out of my office and, as always, I let out a long breath
when she was gone.

"So?  What are you hearing?"

I'd been getting that same question three times a day, five days a week
for more years than I wanted to remember.

""Bout what?"

Stan smirked but didn't move from his position filling my doorway.  He
had the general shape, size, and coloring of a large snowman and
considered my cluttered office a bit claustrophobic.

"Come on, Trev.  You're killin' me over here."

Because of my last name Barnett it had taken me a good two years to
convince my co-workers that I wasn't a spy taking orders from the
executive floor and it was going to take at least another two to
convince them that, despite my family history, no one ever told me
anything.

"What I'm hearing is that we're in trouble up there," Stan prompted.

"Up there" translated into "Montana" in tobacco circles.  On the rare
occasion when someone actually did utter the word Montana, it was
always in a whisper.

"A guy I know knows someone who's related to a juror.  Says she's
always hated smokers.  You'd think we could keep them off the jury."

I shrugged, wishing he'd leave me to my barrel of Coke and cold sweats.
"People smoke, man.  Always have, always will."

Stan took the extraordinary step of entering my office.  He went over
to a small table against the wall and snooped through the papers piled
on it under the pretext of creating a space for his ample butt.

"Don't you watch TV, Trevor?  It's getting worse every day.  You can't
turn the goddamn thing on without having to listen to people bitching
and moaning about how we tricked them and how no one had any idea that
smoking was addictive or dangerous.  Don't they ever get tired of
trying to shovel that load of crap?  Did you know that Christopher
Columbus wrote in his diaries that his men were getting addicted to
tobacco?  And that was without fifty million dollars' worth of
government studies."

Actually, I was the one who'd told him that particular story.  I'd
always found it ironic that a guy dumb enough to think Cuba was China
had all this figured out over five hundred years ago.  I was pretty
certain that said something profound about modern society, but I wasn't
sure what.

"Didn't know that, Stan.  Interesting."

I glanced over at the door and saw a crowd forming.  The floor I worked
on the twelfth was dead in the center of the building and brimming with
middle managers who were about five floors too low to really know what
was going on and about three floors too high to blissfully accept that
ignorance.

"This is it," Stan said with some certainty.  "They're finally going to
get us, aren't they?  They're finally going to do it.  I heard that all
the companies have gotten together and hired a law firm out of Germany
to draw up our bankruptcy papers.  People are saying that the execs are
spinning real estate and other stuff off into partnerships and giving
themselves ownership.  They're sewing their-golden parachutes, man. And
they're gonna jump right before this thing crashes with all of us in
it."

I looked over at the door and found four pairs of eyes staring at me,
waiting for an answer.  Waiting for me to tell them that none of Stan's
rumors were true.  That everything was going to be okay.  I remained
silent.

"I hear the old man's thinking about taking a job with Xerox," Stan
said, still trying to bait me.

The old man he was referring to was the storied CEO of Terra.  Why he
was so renowned, I'd never completely figured out.  Other than his
habit of constantly firing people for the most imperceptible of
offenses, I couldn't think of anything particularly remarkable about
him.  Everyone seemed certain that he'd done brilliant, important
things, though, and the fact that no one could think of a specific
example just added to the Great Gatsby air of mystery surrounding him.
I'd only met the man in passing a few times and, like every other lowly
tobacco serf, I'd done a little bootlicking and then run away before he
could can me because my aftershave offended him or something.  Despite
that, everyone on the floor seemed to think he and I were in constant
consultation.

"You'd know better than me, Stan."  I glanced at my watch.  "Gotta run.
Meeting."

I've always held that most people could be categorized into their
respective phyla and species by their reaction to trust-funders like
myself.  My boss, Chris Carmen, for instance, was an excellent example
of a Double-Breasted Seether.  In fact, he was as fine a specimen as
I'd run across.

"Sorry I'm late, Trevor," he said, bustling into the conference room
with a lot of superfluous motion that was calculated to make him look
busier than he really was.

"No problem, Chris.  It's totally my fault."

"I was up all night."  He fell into a chair and rubbed his face as
though he was trying to increase the circulation to it.  "Danny's got
the flu and now he's given it to Karen.  I couldn't make it in 'til
six-forty-five, and it's put me an hour behind."

In addition to its lovely plumage, the Double-Breasted Seether could be
distinguished by a high-paying job, a carefully cultivated air of
martyrdom, and a complete inability to speak plainly.  What Chris meant
was:

"I spent the night being puffed on by an infant and yelled at by my
sict{ wife while beautiful women fed you grapes and fanned you with
palm fronds.  Maybe tomorrow you could have your breakfast-in-bed
schedule moved up so you can get to work on time."

And while I have to concede that a near-terminal hangover is a poor
excuse for missing a meeting, I figured his life wasn't all that bad.
I'd met his wife she is beautiful, intelligent, and clearly loves him.
I assume his kid was cut from the same cloth.

"Now, Trevor, I realize we had a problem with the servers and that
cross-referencing ground to a halt last week.  But still, we're three
weeks behind on the ten-forty-eights and two weeks behind on the
ten-fifty-threes.  With the servers back up, we've really got to push
to jump this thing back on schedule.  What we don't need is this
snowballing and putting us behind on the sixty-fives ..."

I'll spare you rest of this conversation and cut to the really sad
part: My job isn't even as interesting as it sounds.

I'd been put in charge of computerizing the hundreds of tons of written
documents generated by the tobacco industry over its long history. This
meant scanning them into a digital format, checking for errors,
cross-referencing, hypertexting, classifying, massaging, and so on.
Basically, distilling two hundred years of politics, lawsuits,
monopolies, and death in such a way that information could be
efficiently and exhaustively queried by the handful of people who had
the authority to do so.

The joke went that the industry had told so many lies that it was
impossible to keep them straight without the aid of lightning-fast
Pentiums.  Obviously, it's one of those jokes that's less funny than it
is true.

How had I landed this exciting career?  The long answer is kind of
complicated, but the short answer is simple: A person with my job
description was in an excellent position to stumble across a document
so incriminating and horrifying that it would destroy the tobacco
industry and make the world grind out their butts in a unified and
heartfelt show of disgust.  Of course, the whole idea of that is
laughable, but our executives hadn't quite wrapped their minds around
the fact that there was absolutely nothing even remotely conceivable
that could make us look worse than we already did.

In light of management's somewhat fanciful notions about our public
image, I became an obvious choice for the job.  The theory was that it
would be inconceivable for someone with my family history ever to
become a whistle-blower.

"So what do you think, Trevor?"  Carmen said, tapping his fingers
nervously on the file in front of him.  "I'd jump in and give you a
hand but..."  He let his voice trail off.

And that was another thing that Carmen hated about me.  I had the
company's highest security rating probably a good five levels above
his.  He simply didn't have access to the documents he'd need to get to
in order to help me.

"Don't worry, Chris, I'll "

"Trevor?"

We both twitched at the sound of Ms.  Davenport's voice.  Chris was
afraid of her, too.

I twisted around in my chair and saw her leaning in the partially open
door.  "Yes, ma'am?"

"Have you finished your analysis of the new surgeon general's
report?"

My eyes narrowed in an expression of pain that I really did feel.  It
was sitting half finished on my desk.

"The board meeting's tomorrow at ten," she warned.  "Science already
has theirs done and I hear Legal's going to finish this afternoon.  If
you're going to beat them, you don't have much time .. ."

The deal was that the department that finished its report last was
responsible for delivery.  A terrific incentive to get your work done
in a timely manner given Paul Trainer's habit of shooting the
messenger.

"I'm on it," I lied.  "Thanks, Ms.  Davenport."

Four.

Despite filling myself with half the McDonald's menu, a handful of B
complex tablets, and an inhuman 120 ounces of Coke, my hangover just
wouldn't give up.  The only tangible effect of my diet regimen was
enough trips to the bathroom that the people on my floor were becoming
concerned about the condition of my prostate.

On the surface, I should have ignored my suffering, buckled down, and
finished my pointless analysis of the surgeon general's report in
plenty of time for the board meeting tomorrow.  But I'd already lost my
race with those prima donnas from Legal, and I was starting to fade
badly.

The task I'd been charged with was differentiating this SG report from
the prior ones and finding a place for it in the context of the new
millennium.  Theoretically, that shouldn't have been too tough.  Other
than the more refined scientific methods, larger statistical samples,
and graphs that were now in full-color 3D, the report was just another
reiteration of the same demands: additional education (as though no one
knows smoking is bad for them), federal and private insurance to cover
nicotine patches (which don't work), and starry-eyed testimonials about
the much more draconian anti tobacco policies of the Canadians (who
smoke the same amount we do) and the Europeans (who smoke, well, like
chimneys).

In my mind, though, it was the last paragraph that really showcased the
SG's unique genius.  I quote: "The impact of these various efforts, as
measured with a variety of techniques, is likely to be underestimated
because of the synergistic effect of these modalities."  Now, I don't
know what a synergistic effect of a modality is, but I'd swear that
this says: "No matter how many PhDs tell you people still smoke like
fiends, and no matter how many people you see lighting up, and no
matter how many billions the tobacco industry grosses trust us: We're
winning the war against smoking."

Now about three-quarters finished, my analysis had turned into an
exercise in transforming what was really a single sentence of
information into twenty-five hundred words.  I'd had to use every trick
in the book to do it: even sinking to word processor hi jinx and
replacing the word too with as well throughout the entire document. You
know you're desperate when you start playing those kinds of games.

Eventually, my growing case of writer's block had become bad enough to
demand drastic action.  And in this case, that action was accepting my
co-workers' invitation to happy hour.

The restaurant had sprouted up only a few months after the completion
of Terra's headquarters and was more or less what you'd expect: lots of
vaguely clever old signs advertising non tobacco products from the
fifties, wait staff in striped rugby shirts, a free buffet made up of
the stuff that wasn't quite good enough to serve to paying customers.

Since the Montana suit had started, this place had become more and more
popular filling quickly with nervous people who needed some after-work
sedation and a dose of the latest gossip.  As near as I could tell,
everyone had a cigarette in their hand whether they smoked or not.  A
sign of solidarity.

"You had to run right through them?"  Stan said, lifting a limp roast
beef sandwich to his mouth.  "Damn!  I heard a woman from accounting
got a dead bird thrown at her.  Bet they poisoned it so that they could
use it for ammunition those people have no sense of decency, man.  You
should have just gone and gotten your car you're lucky you made it
through them without getting recognized.  They've got files on all of
us, you know.  They know everything about you, me, and everybody
else."

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Stan had bestowed on the
anti-tobacco lobby Godlike omniscience and a sort of cold war era
Soviet evil.

"It's all on the "Net," he continued, cheeks so full of beef and his
face so red that he looked like a trumpet player trying to hit a high
note.

"What is?"

"The files, man!  You just have to know where they are and have the
passwords.  Then it's all there: Where we live, how much we make, our
high-school transcripts .. ."

"Have you ever seen them?"

He shook his head and dabbed at his mouth with a greasy napkin.  "They
keep it too well hidden."

Stan was the head of a small marketing group known within the company
as the Ministry of Misdirection.  The focus of the Ministry was simple
but surprisingly elegant.  Because it was getting harder and harder to
make 300,000 smoking-related deaths just fade away every year, it had
been decided to try to divert everyone's attention instead.

It was Stan's mission to promote awareness of the other general dangers
of being alive: handguns, alcohol, lead paint, your cell phone giving
you a brain tumor that kind of thing.  He spent his days egging on the
country's more militant consumer advocates, providing them with access
to Terra's considerable marketing expertise (through even more
innocuous-sounding subsidiaries, of course), and using his contacts to
get the media to splash across the nation's TVs the carnage caused by
such things as slippery bathtubs and airbags.

Whenever there was a school shooting and everyone else was asking, "How
many kids were hurt?"  Stan always wanted to know if the shooters were
drunk.  Guns, booze, and the death of children neatly wrapped up in one
dramatic incident were the Holy Grail for a man in his position.

The crowd filling the bar shifted in a way that would allow me a more
or less straight dash to the bathroom, and I used that strategic moment
to take a single, courageous pull on my beer.  My stomach rolled a bit,
but all in all, it went down pretty well.

"You still dating that girl?"  Stan asked, poking at a distracting
piece of beef fat hanging from between his teeth.

"What girl?"  I took another swig from my beer and this time suffered
no gastrointestinal reaction at all.

"Blond skinny thing.  Had one of those highbrow names ..."

"Morgan."

He flicked his lips with his tongue, undoubtedly imagining her long,
naked body framed by a set of satin sheets.

"I don't want to be a jerk, Trevor, but I gotta know.  What's she like?
You know..."

While not a Seether, Stan was another person with a sweet wife and cute
kids who had convinced himself that I lived the life of a rock star.  I
didn't answer, instead taking a third pull from the bottle in my hand.
This time the icy liquid flowing down my throat actually made me feel
better.

"Come on, Trevor.  I swear, I'll never ask you anything like this
again.  But you're killing me here."

The truth was that sex with Morgan had been as sterile an activity as
I'd ever participated in.  But Stan didn't ask for much, and it just
didn't seem right to disappoint him.

"Crazy, man.  Crazy."

"I knew it.  It's always the stiff, bi " He caught himself before he
said "bitchy ones."

"Anyway, must be all that repressed energy .. . So?  You still going
with her?  Is it serious?"

Honestly, I'm not sure we'd ever been "going together."  She'd wanted
to rebel and as the black sheep of a "good" southern family, I was just
lunatic fringe enough to make her daddy angry but not so lunatic fringe
as to make him furious.  When it had become obvious that he didn't care
one way or another, she'd gotten bored with me pretty fast.

"Couldn't keep up," I said.  "Seriously.  She had me up 'til three
a.m.

seven days a week.  It was getting so I couldn't drag myself out of bed
in the morning."

His fat cheeks ballooned again as a wide grin spread across his face. I
lit a cigarette and took a delicate puff.

"So what're you hearing about Montana?"  he asked me for a record
seventh time that day.  "What's the inside track?"

I shrugged and he leaned into me, lowering his voice so as to make sure
none of the people around us could overhear.  "Come on, man!  We're
friends, right?  We've been friends for what, five years?  I've got
kids to feed and a wife who doesn't like to work.  Should I be looking
for another job?"

"I honestly don't know, Stan.  If I did, I'd tell you.  I swear."

"It's bad, isn't it?"

I drained the rest of my beer and waved at the bartender to bring me
another.  "If you've got an offer from another company on the table,
Stan, you might want to think about taking it."

I didn't make it back to my desk until after ten.

The quick medicinal beer had turned into five medicinal beers and about
thirty not-so-medicinal Buffalo wings.  I fell into my chair, rubbing
my bloated stomach and staring at my reflection in the windows of my
office.  I looked better the green hue of my skin had turned to a kind
of a high-blood-pressure pink and the gleam of hangover-induced sweat
was gone from my skin, leaving my image a little hazy and lifeless.  A
more normal state for me.

My partially finished analysis of the new SG report was up on the
computer screen and I turned toward it, having a hard time bringing the
words into focus at first.  When my eyes finally adjusted, I found that
even with a healthy buzz, it still had the feel of a poorly written
high-school book report.

"What do you want from me?"  I said to the empty office.  No answer.

The amazing thing was that this job had seemed great when I took it. In
fact, "great" didn't even capture my initial enthusiasm.  "Perfect"
would be more accurate.  I mean, it involved history something I was
genuinely interested in it afforded me near total autonomy; there was
really nowhere to get promoted to and therefore the position boasted an
almost complete lack of accountability and politics; and finally, I
wasn't physically involved in the production or marketing of
cigarettes.  All I did was neatly arrange papers that described things
that had already happened.

What I hadn't counted on was the fact that spending your life doing
something tedious, pointless, and endless had certain drawbacks.  And
the truth was, no matter how much I denied it, I was still a cog in the
machine.  Worse, I was a cog that sat around rationalizing away my
involvement with meaningless technicalities.  At best a not-so-original
industry pastime, at worst a century-long industry tradition.

I leaned my forehead against the edge of my desk and mumbled a few
obscenities.

Nine years my entire adult life after college that's how long I'd
worked there.  Actually, that isn't entirely true: I'd quit twice.  I
can't remember the catalysts for those uncharacteristically bold acts
anymore but I definitely can remember marching into Chris's office,
slapping my resignation on his desk, and walking out.  I also remember
crawling back two days later and asking for my job back.  He hadn't
bothered to look surprised but, to his credit, he hadn't made me beg.

Perhaps a little explanation is in order here:

The trust my grandfather created for me consisted of nearly 200,000
shares of tobacco industry stock and provided me with two fundamental
benefits.  The first was that upon graduation from college, I would be
entitled to annual payments based on an arcane formula involving
capital gains, dividends, and inflation.  The second was that at age
sixty the trust would be fully distributed to me.  There were a number
of catches of course, but the main ones related to my employment.  In
order to receive the annual payments I had to have worked for a tobacco
company for the entire preceding year and in order to get the final
distribution I had to have spent my entire career working for the
industry.

With this and my father's similar but much more lucrative trust, my
grandfather had guaranteed a motivated dynasty of Barnetts toiling in
the tobacco fields for two more generations.  In fact, based on the
average age of death when the documents had originally been drafted,
he'd intended for us to die at our desks, having not lived long enough
to ever get our hands on his money.

What no one who wasn't in my position could comprehend was the
incredible power of that elusive payout.  I'd known it was there from
before I was old enough to understand what it was.  Over the years, it
had taken on an almost human quality like a kindly relative.  "Don't
worry, I'll take care of you," it whispered in my ear.  "You'll never
really be on your own."

As time went on, though, I came to realize that it was a trap.
Actually, trap might be too strong a word since it was so easily
avoided.  But trapped I was.

This was all the more pathetic when you consider what my trust was
doing for me.  I hadn't seen a dime of it since the industry had
started to tank two years ago.  My last stock statement had shown a
total value of just over a million dollars.  And after the Montanans
got through with us, that would likely plummet even further.  Taking
inflation into account, I'd probably have just enough to go out to
dinner on my sixtieth birthday.  But only if I went alone which was
more than likely the way things were going.

"Fuck you, too!"  I shouted at the empty building.

The acoustically engineered cube farm outside my door absorbed the
sound with the ruthless efficiency I'd come to expect of all things
tobacco.  I jumped to my feet, swaying dangerously from the alcohol in
my system, and shouted louder.  "You heard me!  Fuck you!"

What the hell was I doing with my life?  Darius was making hundreds of
millions of dollars a year.  Einstein had already developed the theory
of special relativity at my age.  Half the movie and rock stars in the
world were younger than me.  There were thirty-two-year-old doctors and
thirty two-year-old lawyers and thirty-two-year-old congressmen all out
there looking down on me.  And why not?  I'd spent the last nine years
doing absolutely nothing, in anticipation of being rewarded for that
laziness when my life was mostly over.  Suddenly, I started to remember
what had prompted me to quit the first two times.

I threw myself into my chair and closed my moronic summary of the
surgeon general's report in favor of a blank page that would contain my
latest resignation letter.  I began typing quickly, promising myself
that this would be the last time.  Weak economy or no weak economy, I'd
hit the streets and find myself a real job.  I might end up cleaning
out garbage cans for five bucks an hour, but damn it, I'd be doing it
on my own.

I'd made it about halfway through the rather tersely worded letter when
I found myself slowing down.  What if finding a decent job was hard?
What if it was really hard?  Terra would still be here and so would
Chris, sitting there in his office waiting for me to come crawling
back.

And what if I did?  What would my future be?  How long could Terra hold
out against a court system bent on its destruction?  What if it was a
long time?  What if instead of going out with a bang, the company just
slowly crumbled?  What if I came back and the company folded when I was
forty?  Or fifty?  It would be too late for me then.  Too late to do
anything with my life.

I started typing again, hard enough that the clack of the keys bounced
around my office a bit before being sucked into the void beyond.  Not
this time, I promised myself.  This time, I wouldn't come back ...
Would I?

I slowed again and then stopped, finally leaning back in my chair and
staring at the computer screen.  How long I sat there, I'm not sure.

For some reason, I sensed that this was it the fork in my road.  Either
I decided to go it alone now or I just resigned myself to fading away
along with the industry my family had started.

I thought about the board meeting tomorrow and I thought about Paul
Trainer, Terra's ego maniacal hatchet man of a CEO.  Then I deleted my
rather verbose letter and replaced it with a single sentence, centered
on the page.

After admiring the concise eloquence of my new SG report analysis, I
printed it and tucked it lovingly it into the folder from Legal.

In less than twenty-four hours, I'd be free.

Five.

I CAME VIOLENTLY AWAKE AT SIX A.M. THE NEXT

morning and lay there frozen for a few seconds before jumping out of
bed and running into the bathroom screaming.

"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!"

I nearly ripped the shower door off the wall, turned on the water, and
threw myself beneath the icy stream.  I staggered back until I hit the
cold tile behind me and stood there taking shallow, shaking breaths.

"Okay," I said aloud to myself.  "Relax.  Just relax and think for a
minute."

Nicotine wandered in and flopped down next to the toilet, baring her
teeth in a wide yawn.  She didn't seem sure what to make of the
situation but clearly didn't want to miss anything interesting.

I put my hands in front of me to block the still-frigid water and tried
to calmly assess my situation.

Physical: Not too bad.  My happy hour antics and a lack of sleep had
combined to extend my hangover, but it was one of those friendly ones
where your skull feels big and empty but nothing really hurts.  My
heart was pounding out of control, but that fit better under the next
category ... Psychological: My emotional state would best be described
as desperate, uncontrolled panic combined with the sensation of being
completely alone in the universe.

Employment: Soon to be nonexistent.  When Paul Trainer got my
one-sentence summary he was going to completely melt down.  He'd once
fired a twenty-year veteran of the company for parking partway in his
space.  I'd be lucky if he didn't tell Security to work me over before
they threw me out in the street.

Financial: Broke.  My savings account continued to dwindle as I raided
it every month to pay the mortgage that was supposed to be covered by
my trust distributions.

Prospects: None.  When Trainer got through blackballing me, I'd have to
move to another planet to get a decent job.

"Shut up," I ordered myself, though I hadn't been talking aloud.  The
water had finally warmed up a bit and I took a hesitant step forward,
letting it pound on the top of my head.  "It's okay, it's okay ... This
is what you wanted ... You can do this."

It seemed like a stretch, but I forced myself to modify my
assessment.

Prospects: Limitless.

I was trapped at the back when the elevator doors opened, and I almost
knocked an old lady over when I forced myself forward.

Despite the fact that it was only ten after eight, I crossed the floor
at a full run dodging around knots of early-morning gossipers and
ignoring their obvious curiosity.  When I rounded the corner, I saw Ms.
Davenport's, face hovering just above the wall of her cubicle, scanning
the horizon like a sailor worried about icebergs.

"Why are you late?"  she said as I skidded to a stop on the low-pile
carpet.  There was a strange whine in her voice that I'd never heard
before and that softened the normal authoritarian finality of it.

"I was in here all night working on my report," I lied.  "Besides, I'm
not late.  It's only quarter after eight."

That seemed to confuse her, so I glanced into my office and checked my
statement against the Marlboro clock hanging above my desk.  It read
eight-fifteen exactly.  Plenty of time to tear up all evidence of last
night's bout of temporary, alcohol-induced insanity and deliver to the
board the twenty pages of repetitive drivel still saved on my hard
drive.  It wasn't a piece of writing that would win me any accolades,
but it wasn't bad enough to get me fired either.

I feinted right, then shot around her to the left, going for the
coffeepot on top of a file-wide bank of file cabinets.  "You'll have my
report in five minutes, Ms.  Davenport.  Sorry it's last minute.  If
you need help with the copying, I'd be happy to pitch in."

"What report?"

"The board report," I said, trying to sound casual.  "You know, the one
you've been on me about for the last two weeks?"

That seemed to perplex her even more, and I wondered if she'd had one
of those mild strokes people her age got.  According to the new surgeon
general's report, smokers were thirty-one percent more susceptible ...
"Are you feeling all right, Ms.  Davenport?"

"I didn't see a copy of it!"

I shrugged and took a sip of coffee.  It was too hot and I sucked in a
breath, trying to cool it.  "It's on my computer.  I know I should have
printed off a copy and left it on your desk last night, but I was
beat."

I started to turn toward my office, but her expression stopped me.  It
wasn't the expression itself, actually more the fact that it was
completely frozen to her face.

"Seriously, Ms.  Davenport.  Are you oka "

"How was I supposed to know it was on your computer!"  she said at
nearly a shout.  "There was no way for me to know!"

I took a step back, increasing the distance between us in case she
decided to attack.  "Um, no problem, ma'am.  Tell you what, I'll just
deal with the copying myself and run them upstairs when I'm finished
then you don't even have to deal with it.  Ten o'clock, right?"

She began playing with the chain holding her glasses around her neck.
"The ... the meeting got moved up."

I blinked a few times.  "What?"

"It started half an hour ago.  I tried to call you, but you weren't
answering your phone."

As I let that process, I felt the mild queasiness caused by my hangover
surge dangerously.  "Are you telling me that... that the entire board
is upstairs meeting about a set-of reports they don't have?"

Ms.  Davenport shook her head.  "The reports from Legal and Science
were on your desk.  I had the mailroom run copies while I tried to find
yours.  I looked everywhere, Trevor.  I even tried your computer, but I
don't have access to a lot of your files ..."

I was barely able to keep myself from hyperventilating as my mind
filled with images of the directors of one of the largest corporations
in America men and women who were captains of industry, former
high-ranking politicians, and worse sitting around discussing
everyone's report but mine.

"Trevor, I'm sorry.  I didn't know what to do ..."

I made a mad dash for my office and started jabbing desperately at my
keyboard, pulling up my original report and printing it as I mumbled
pathetically to myself.  "It's only been a half an hour they're
probably not even through the first two reports yet, right?  I'll ...
I'll just tell them it was a computer glitch.  They won't say anything.
Half of them have probably never even turned on a computer .. . It'll
be okay ..."

I only waited about ten seconds for the elevator before running for the
stairs with twelve hastily stapled copies of my report under my arm.
Normally, the elaborately constructed and richly decorated stairwell
was my favorite part of the building.  The walls were covered with
beautifully framed, chronologically organized copies of important
paintings.  The theory had been that if you made the stairs the nicest
part of the building, people would use them and the exercise would help
raise Terra's workers' life expectancy above that of sub-Saharan
Africa.

I bounded through Impressionism on pure adrenaline and managed to keep
my momentum through Cubism, but by the time I got to the abstract
multimedia stuff I was wheezing like an old man with asthma.
Fortunately, no one but me ever came in here and so there would be no
stories of me doubled over on the steps, coughing and gagging in front
of the entrance to the executive floor.  When I got my breathing more
or less under control, I punched a few numbers into a keypad next to
the door and staggered through.

No one seemed to notice as I jogged through the elegantly paneled halls
toward the boardroom.  It was like sweaty, panicked thirty-somethings
ran through there every day.

"Can I help you, Trevor?"

Susan Page, Paul Trainer's assistant, smiled benevolently.

"I need to ... um.  I need to talk to the board, Susan.  I've got to
"

"Go on in.  They're expecting you."

My breath caught in my chest for a moment.  "What do you mean?"

"Uh ... I mean, they're expecting you."

I nodded stiffly and walked down the hall, stopping in front of the
double doors that led into the boardroom but not entering.

This wasn't a cop-out, I told myself for what must have been the
hundredth time.  The smart move was to try to save my job at Terra and
then start working on my resume tonight.  I mean, getting fired and
pissing off Paul Trainer wasn't exactly something that was going to
impress a prospective employer.  No point in burning your bridges
behind you.  Right?

"Trevor?"  Susan said, peeking around the corner.  "You can go right
in."

I smiled weakly and pulled the reports from under my arm, relieved to
see they weren't damp with sweat.

For some reason, I was afraid to open the door too wide and I'm sure I
ended up looking like an idiot as I squeezed my considerable bulk
through too small a crack.  In the end, though, I made it and closed
the door quietly behind me before backing myself into a corner.

No one seemed to notice my arrival, concentrating instead on an
argument going on between Paul Trainer and a man I didn't know.  I was
a little too overwhelmed to track on it, instead using the time to go
over a little computer mumbo jumbo that might explain the tardiness of
my report.

"I don't give a shit what the goddamn media is saying!"  Trainer
shouted.  "And I'm not listening to any crap about journalistic
integrity because we all know there's no such thing and never has been.
This is about the same thing it's always about.  Money.  Plain and
simple."

"Come on, Paul.  The tide's turning further and further against us, and
the media's along for the ride.  I agree with you that we can use our
advertising budgets to pressure them, but we've got to be subtle.  We
can't just cut off organizations that come out with negative stories
about us.  It would backfire.  I guarantee it."

Trainer waved his hand in the way powerful men do when they know
they're wrong.  Then he looked directly at me.

"Trevor Barnett," he said in that old-timey drawl of his.  "I'm so
happy you could spare us some of your time."

"Yes, sir.  I'm afraid there was a fatal hard-drive crash and my backup
on the network "

"What the hell are you talking about, son?  I swear to God, I can't
understand a thing you kids say anymore."

For some reason, the polite titter in the room made it occur to me that
I should step out of the corner I'd folded myself into.  "What I meant
to say was "

Trainer cut me off.  "Because as near as I can tell, you seem to have
no problem speaking plain, concise English."

I was confused for a moment and then felt the heat in my face when I
realized I was being made fun of.  My nonexistent report was the height
of conciseness.  Ha, ha, ha.  Good one.  My eyes shifted to either side
of the table that Trainer was sitting at the head of, scanning the
serious, aging faces poking out of expensive suits.

A few years back, a columnist from an uncharacteristically critical
Christian magazine had compared Paul Trainer to Satan and bestowed the
elaborate names of lesser demons on the rest of the board.  At this
moment it wasn't hard to imagine them that way.

Trainer flipped open one of the folders in front of him the Legal
analysis judging from the faux leather cover and pulled a single sheet
from it.

"Smoking is still real bad for you," he read.  "And we have no idea
what we're going to do about it."

I'm not generally what you'd describe as a dense person, but in my
current rather stressful situation, it took a few moments for me to
recognize my own words and to connect everything in my brain.  When I
did, I felt my face turn a shade of red that would have shamed a
tomato.  Those jerks in the mailroom had copied the page I'd stuffed in
the Legal folder and put it in the board's package.

I looked at my shoes and then glanced up into the face of the company's
general counsel Beelzebub to the Northern Christian Weekly.  Beneath
thinning, mousy brown hair, his face was redder than mine.  Maybe it
was just the lighting, but I'd swear his anorexic little lips were
turning blue.

"Are you all right, Dad?"  I said before I could catch myself.

He jerked in his chair as though he'd been bit, shot his colleagues a
look that suggested he was surprised to discover I was his son, but he
never acknowledged me.  I stepped back into my corner again.

Trainer regained control of the meeting by grabbing the Science report
and flipping through it with loud flicks of his yellowed nails.  I just
stood there feeling weaker and weaker.  This was all a stupid mistake.
Surely, I could explain I could say that the page tucked into the Legal
report was there by mistake and had actually just been a statement of
theme for the excellent report I now held in my sweaty palms .. .

"Trevor," Trainer said finally.  "I want to congratulate you."

His voice held no sarcasm but obviously the statement itself did.  The
board members surrounding the table had the good grace not to snicker
probably out of respect for my father's plight.  They undoubtedly all
had children who were disappointments, too.

"In documents so thick they could not be penetrated by a small-caliber
bullet," Trainer continued, holding the Legal and Science reports up in
front of him, "you have managed to write the only thing that makes a
bit of goddamn sense to me."

There was silence as we all waited for the punch line.

"I was starting to think I was going crazy, son.  I'd like to thank you
for proving me sane."

More silence.  I looked over at my father for some clue as to what was
going on, but he didn't seem to understand either.

"Yes, sir," I said when I realized Trainer expected a response.  "Thank
you, sir.  Now I'll let you get back to your meeting.  I'm sorry to
have bothered you."

I'm embarrassed to say that I slid along the wall until I could reach
the door and squeeze through it.

Trainer's eyes were on me the whole time.

Six.

I SAT IN MY OFFICE, ELBOWS ON DESK, HEAD IN

hands, for so long that my neck started to cramp.  I tried to will
myself to sit up straight and start cleaning out my desk to show a
little dignity but all I could manage was to shift to a slightly more
comfortable position.

I'd replayed Paul Trainer's words a hundred times and each time they'd
taken on a little more venom.  Why hadn't he fired me on the spot, as
was his custom?  Simple.  He was too mad for that.  He perceived that I
a useless thirty-two-year-old trust-funder who'd never done anything
worthwhile in his whole life was disrespecting him.  There was no way a
simple firing was going to satisfy him.  He wouldn't rest until he
completely destroyed my life.

After another ten minutes of conjuring up elaborate mental images of
the things Trainer was planning for me many of which hadn't been legal
in two centuries I finally stood and took a few deep breaths.

"Pull yourself together," I said to the empty office.  "What's done is
done.  It's time to think about the future.  What are you going to
do?"

I walked over to open my door but thought better of it and went to
stand in front of the window instead.  The protestors were still
milling around below like colorful, sign-carrying ants.  I imagined I
could hear their shouts, though the building's exterior soundproofing
had been designed with them in mind.

I assumed that the world wasn't going to give me a lot of sympathy. Why
should it?  I was an able-bodied, reasonably young American with a
college degree and a few dollars in the bank.  The world was mine for
the taking, right?

Then why was I already trying to figure how I could grovel convincingly
enough to get my father to go to Paul Trainer and intervene on my
behalf?  I mean, I didn't need to keep this particular job, right? They
could put me somewhere Trainer would never see or hear from me again.
I could work in the ... Christ.

At that moment, could I have been any more pathetic?  My father had
never run to my rescue in his life.  By now, he was probably halfway
finished tossing my baby pictures into that stately fireplace of his.

There was a knock at my door, and I spun around.  They were here.
Security was here to escort me off the premises.  I'd seen it done
before a guard on either side, not touching you but close enough that
they could grab you if you started to make a scene.

The knock came again and I stood, squaring my shoulders and thrusting
out my chin.  It was true that I didn't have much to hold my head high
about, but that didn't mean I couldn't.  It didn't mean I couldn't walk
out of there clinging hopelessly to that damp spark of pride I'd been
unsuccessfully trying to fan since I was a kid.

"Come in."

The knob started to turn ... "What happened with the board meeting?"

It was just Stan.

"Jesus, man," I said, reaching for the back of my chair for support as
I felt myself sag at the knees.

"What?"

"Nothing.  Okay?  Nothing?"

"What's wrong with you, Trev?  Did the board beat on you?"

I shot him a hostile look, paranoid that he knew exactly what had
happened and that he was just playing with me.

"You're getting to be a secretive bastard, you know that?"  he said,
pushing the door completely open.  "I heard from one of the secretaries
up there that you were in the meeting for a pretty long time.  You're
working on something for them, aren't you?  And don't try to tell me
they just wanted to talk to you about the goddamn surgeon general.  I
may have been born at night, but not last night."

I tried to will him out of my office, but he just settled a pudgy
shoulder against the doorjamb.

"I just went up there to pass out my report, Stan.  That's it."

He smirked.  "I heard that the execs looked like Trainer had taken his
nine iron to 'em when they got out of there.  And I heard he spent
special time with your old man."

I winced, picturing my dad having to sit through half an hour of his
boss telling him what a loser I was and speculating on his failings as
a father.  I stared at the floor and didn't respond, hoping that Stan
would eventually take the hint and close me back up in my office so I
could wallow alone.  He didn't, though.  I could still see his shoes.

"Okay, enough of this," he said finally.  "Is it true?"

"Is what true, Stan?"

"That your whole report was one sentence?  "Smoking is damn bad for
you?""

Not only was the story out; it was already being exaggerated.  I saw no
point in denying it, though.

"I guess.  More or less."

"Shit, man.  You really do lead the good life.  I would kill to have
seen their faces.  What did they do?  What did they do when they read
it?"

"Nothing."  I fell into my chair.  "Nothing at all."

He started shaking his head appreciatively but then froze halfway into
the motion.  "Thanks for the input, Trevor," he said abruptly.  "Let me
work on that and I'll get back to you with the results."

"What?"  I said, but he was already out of earshot hustling back toward
his cubicle with the unnatural gait of the overweight speed walkers I
sometimes saw burning up the sidewalk in my neighborhood.

I assumed that he'd seen Terra's storm troopers bearing down on my
office, so I stood and squared my shoulders again.  I was working on my
chin thrust when Paul Trainer came strolling through my door.

"Never been down here," he said, brushing by me.  His old bones
protested audibly beneath a thin layer of skin as he sat down in my
chair.  "Cubicles!  What an insidious invention.  Make me feel like a
rat in a maze.  Really.  I get nervous that I'll get trapped and starve
or something."

I stepped back slowly, not listening to what he was saying as much as
wondering what he was doing in my office.  It finally occurred to me
that he was so enraged that whatever he was going to do to me, he
wanted to do it personally.

He crossed his chopstick legs and smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from
expensive blue slacks.  "I'd like to ask you a favor, Trevor."

What the hell was I doing standing there like an idiot when I could be
prostrating myself before him?

"Mr.  Trainer, I want to apologize "

He made a cutting motion across his throat, silencing me.

"Listen, I need you to go meet with our attorneys in Montana.  I need
you to do it tonight.  The trial's pretty well under way, and I've got
to tell you that I don't understand what's going on up there.  Whenever
I ask a simple goddamn question, I end up with fifty pages of
ass-covering in Latin.  Lawyers are like politicians: The truth is
whatever they can convince themselves of when they get up in the
morning.  You don't seem to have that failing."

Was this a joke?  No, not a joke.  He was setting me up somehow.

"You can talk now," he said.

"Um.  I, uh ..."

"Actual words would work better for me, Trevor."

"I'm not a lawyer," was all I managed to get out.

"Neither am I. Got a goddamn English degree.  Did you know that?"

"No, sir."

"Based on what you wrote about the surgeon general's report, it looks
to me like you know how to make a simple point.  That's what I need: I
need you to tell me in plain English where we stand up there."

"I've got a meeting tonight that I can't miss," I said, my mouth
working completely independently of my brain.

"Have I given you any reason to believe I care about your other
plans?"

"Getting a flight's going to be "

"You say 'can't' a lot, don't you, Trevor?  Or maybe it's just me.  Do
you have some problem with me?  Did I cross you in a prior life?  Is
there some reason you won't do me this simple favor?"

"No.  It's just..."

"Good.  Talk to Susan.  Take my jet."

He stood and started for the door, but then paused directly in front of
me.  Trainer was probably a good eight inches shorter than I was, and I
tried to look down at him in a way that wouldn't make it seem like I
was suggesting he was short.

"Maybe something slightly more verbose than your last report," he said,
tapping my chest with a crooked finger.  "No.  Better yet, why don't
you give me an oral presentation."

He ducked around me but stopped again, this time in the doorway.  "Show
me you've got some common sense, Trevor.  Okay?"

Then he was gone, slamming my door shut behind him and leaving me to
try to figure out what had just happened.

Maybe he'd really liked my analysis of the surgeon general's report.

No.  That was stupid.  There was no way.  This was just part of his
plan to torture me before going in for the kill.  I remembered what he
said about lawyers being like politicians.  Was he angry with my father
for his failure to keep the courts from finding a way to tear the
industry apart?  Was that why he was sending me to Montana?  Was it a
calculated insult to my dad?  What better way for Trainer to show
distain for his legal team than to send T. Edwin Barnett's screw-up son
to check up on them?

I had no idea how to take things at this level.  The subtle
back-and-forth of office politics was way beyond me.  What I didn't
need to do,

though, was make my relationship with my father any worse than it was.
But what choice did I have?  Trainer had been clear that he wasn't
really asking me to go.  He was telling me to go.

I sat down again, working to clear my mind.  There was no point in my
trying to outmaneuver anyone it wasn't my thing.  I had no choice but
to just go along.

That, more than anything, was my thing.

Seven.

With some difficulty, I escaped the soothing grip of the deep leather
seat and moved to one with a slightly different curve to it.  Then to
another, and another, until I'd tried them all.  Every one seemed more
comfortable than the last.  It didn't matter, though, since I was
having a hard time sitting.  I went over to a polished wood bar and
tried to figure out how to free a bottle of cleverly secured Bushmills,
but it turned out to be a little too cleverly secured and I quickly
lost interest.

The floor dropped beneath me a bit and I felt an unfamiliar tickle in
my stomach as I reached out to steady myself.  I wanted to say
something, to ask if that kind of thing was normal, but didn't want to
come off as a complete bumpkin so I kept my mouth shut.

I was the only occupant of the surprisingly spacious jet except for the
pilot and copilot, of course.  Just me, the thick carpet, the expensive
liquor, the plush leather, and an impressive collection of silver
ashtrays.

My family, for reasons that now seemed obvious to me, had never
traveled much.  In my thirty-two years, this was only my second time on
an airplane.  But now here I was, taking an unfamiliar mode of
transportation into completely uncharted territory for unfathomable
reasons.

The key to staving off panic was keeping my mind occupied, I decided,
so I walked up to the cockpit door and peered at the men inside.  They
didn't seem to be doing much.  I stood there and tried to figure out
what all the dials, buttons, and switches were for until the pilot
turned and graciously asked me if there was anything he could do for
me.  I shook my head and went back to retest the seats.

Another fifteen minutes and I'd done everything there was to do but fly
the plane.  I tried to fill my mind with a magazine Corporate Jet
Review or something equally esoteric but it wasn't long before the fact
that I was on my way to interrogate a bunch of
five-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyers about a subject I knew almost
nothing about started to creep back into my mind.  What was I going to
ask them?  What did Paul Trainer want from me?

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and, after clearing it with the
pilot, dialed a number from memory.

"John O'Byrne."

"Hey, John, this is Trevor."

"Trevor?  I can barely hear you.  You're not on a cell are you?"

"Yeah, I "

"Jesus!  Are you crazy?  Do you know how easy it is to monitor one of
those things?"

Honestly, I'd never given it much thought.

"I just wanted to tell you that I can't make it tonight, John."

"But we've got the meet all set up.  It has been for weeks."

Why was it that meetings were always aboveboard but meets had a
sinister edge to them?  John loved all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, so
I tended to play along to whatever degree possible.

"Unavoidable," I said.  "Sorry."

"It's okay.  No problem.  I'll take care of the reschedule and contact
you the normal way.  And Trevor?  For God's sake, use a land line next
time!"

I cut off the phone and was in the process of stuffing it back in my
pocket when it started to ring.  I didn't immediately answer, instead
just stared down at it for a few moments.  Hardly anyone ever called me
and when they did, it was never on my cell.  Almost no one had the
number ... I smiled.  Darius did.

I was trying to figure out a way to work in that I was on a corporate
jet as I picked up.  Maybe something like "What?  You're breaking up.
Maybe it's turbulence from the corporate jet's engines."  No, too
obvious.

"Hello?"

"What the hell was that all about?"

An uncomfortable jolt of adrenaline forced its way through my body.
"Dad .. . Uh, how are "

"I've got personal-injury suits going in every state, including a class
action in Montana that's the most dangerous thing the industry's ever
faced and you're playing schoolboy pranks in the boardroom?  Do you
know how that makes me look?"

"Do you?"

It was the longest conversation we'd had in over a year, breaking the
record set by a meaningless back-and-forth about the condition of his
lawn and the prospect of rain.

"I'm really sorry, sir.  Honestly, it was just a stupid mistake.  A
series of them, actually.  It started when "

"I don't want to hear excuses, Trevor.  That's all I've gotten out of
you your whole life.  Jesus Christ!  You've been handed everything! All
you have to do is wake up in the morning and not fuck it up!  But you
can't even manage that, can you?"

"No, sir," I mumbled.  "I'm sorry.  I "

"Sorry's not good enough.  You get your ass up to my office right now
and we're going to have a talk about how you're going to behave at this
company going forward.  You're going to start toeing the goddamn line
here, Trevor, or you're going to find yourself on the street.  Do you
understand me?"

Suddenly I didn't want him to know what I was doing.  It seemed more
and more likely that Trainer was purposefully insulting my father
through me.  I took a quiet breath, trying to center myself a bit.  I
had an unfortunate tendency to do this half-stutter thing when I was
lying and the cell static wasn't bad enough to cover it up.

"I'm not in the office right now, sir.  Can we do it tomorrow?  Maybe
in the afternoon?"  Not really a lie, and I'd actually spit it out
pretty smoothly.

"Already gone for the day, Trevor?  It's goddamn three-thirty!"

"Dad "

"You seem to be putting a lot of stock in your name.  It's not going to
get you as far as you think.  I guarantee that Trainer's going to come
after you over this, and don't expect me to stick my neck out and stop
him."

"Yes, sir."

"Wherever you are, turn around and get in here.  Now!"

Thirty-two years of trying to keep my relationship with my father on an
even keel was hard to overcome, but it occurred to me that trying to
handle him now was just going to backfire later.  There was no question
that he was going to find out about my trip.  That was probably the
whole point of it.

"I can't.  I'm on a plane."

"A plane?  Why?  Where are you going?"

"I'm on my way to talk to our attorneys in Montana."

"Jesus Christ, Trevor!  These guys are up to their asses in that case
right now.  They don't have time for one of your stupid history
projects.  And after what you did today, you should just be sitting in
your office, working your butt off and hoping Trainer's got enough on
his mind that he forgets about you."

I stiffened a little at that.  I doubted my father had any idea what I
did for the company and while I had my failings as a human being and a
son, I wasn't stupid.

"Paul Trainer asked me to do it," I said.

"What?  What did you say?"

"I said Paul Trainer asked me to go to Montana and talk to our
attorneys."

"Paul Trainer asked you?"

"Yeah.  He said he needed a feel for what's going on up there," I said
angrily, getting as close to overtly attacking my father as I ever
had.

There was a long silence over the phone.

"You're breaking up," my father said finally, and then the line went
dead.

Eight.

By the time I ducked through the jet's door and into Montana's
completely transparent air, there was already a car easing to a stop at
the base of the steps.  A man who seemed to be wearing a suit for the
first time in his life burst from the vehicle and skittered around to
open the back door for me.

"Can I help you with that?"  he asked, a little out of breath from his
five-yard sprint.

I clutched the leather briefcase in my hand a little tighter and shook
my head gravely.  "I'd better hang on to it."

Truthfully, the case was just for show it contained an unmarked yellow
legal pad, a cheap ballpoint pen, and a pear.  It gave me something to
do with my hands, though, and hopefully made me look more official.

My driver jerked his head in a way that suggested agreement and
servitude, then began to run back around the car.  He stopped short
somewhere near the front bumper, turned, and ran back to close the door
behind me.  Shortly thereafter, we were off.

"It'll just be a few minutes, sir," he said.  "Mr.  Stone, Mr.
Alexander, and Mr.  Reeves are waiting for you at the office."

Despite the late hour, all three lawyers appeared to be freshly
scrubbed and pressed.  I told myself that it was for my benefit, but it
was more likely that people just didn't sweat or wrinkle in this
climate.  Beyond good grooming, though, they had little in common.

Only one of them moved when I entered the office, striding up to me and
taking my hand in a slightly painful, but sincere grip.

"Mr.  Barnett.  It's good to meet you.  I'm Steve Reeves."

The name seemed to exist somewhere in an unused corner of my mind, and
it took me a little while to recall that it belonged to an actor who
had once played The Hulk.  Strangely appropriate.  Steve was about
forty, with a face that seemed to have seen twice that many years'
worth of sun and wind.  He had one of those thin frames with slightly
outsized shoulders that marked him as an athlete and not just a person
who forced himself into the gym three times a week.

"Nice to meet you, too, Steve.  Call me Trevor."

He smiled broadly and waved a hand toward the man standing behind him.
"Let me introduce you to Frank Stone."

Stone's grip was a bit gentler: rough skin covering puffy flesh.  He
was probably in his mid-forties, with a serious expression and a faded
brown tie that for some reason made me certain he'd lived in Montana
his whole life.  I'd have given odds that he was a state senator or
maybe even the town's mayor.

"... and I think you know Dan."

I looked down at a man who obviously had no intention of abandoning the
bench he was sitting on.  We'd met few times before, though I'd never
heard anyone call him Dan.  His suit was dark gray, not far removed
from black, and contrasted violently with his white shirt and bloodred
tie.  He had a narrow face that seemed to come to a gradual point at
the tip of his sharp nose, giving up aesthetics for aerodynamics and
making him look a bit like a rat.  Actually, that description was
probably tainted by what I knew about him, but it gets the point
across.  I nodded politely, and he gazed back at me through an
expression that was undoubtedly calculated to be neutral but came off
more as put out.

And why not?  Daniel Alexander was a former Harvard Law professor who
now coordinated the tobacco industry's more high-profile litigation and
reported directly to my father.  When we'd met in the past, he'd been
dismissive and abrupt quickly conveying that his time was too important
to spend on someone like me.  I suspected that his feelings hadn't
changed.

"Hello, Daniel," I said, forcing him to acknowledge me.  "It's good to
see you again."

"Likewise."

We all looked at each for a few seconds.

"What is it we can do for you, Trevor?"  Reeves said, finally.

"Paul Trainer sent me here to get a feel for what's going on.  I think
he feels a little cut off, being all the way across the country and
all," I said, sticking to my mental script.  "Obviously, this is on top
of his priority list right now."

"We've been sending detailed reports," Reeves said, sounding a little
worried.  "Pretty much daily ..."

"I know," I said, though I really didn't.  In fact, I'd been provided
no background at all for this trip.  I was working only with what I'd
read in the papers and heard through the slightly panicked office
grapevine.

"Paul's shaky on long, technical reports," I said.  "He'd rather get
his information a little more ... personally."

That solicited a condescending snicker from Alexander.  "Paul Trainer
reads everything he gets and understands everything he reads."

We all waited for him to elaborate, but it became apparent that he had
nothing more to say.

"That may be true," I said, adlibbing a bit.  "But it's hard for him to
get a handle on the intangibles from a report... The, uh,
atmosphere."

Reeves nodded slowly.  "I don't know exactly what to tell you, Trevor.
In the end, it's going to come down to the jury."  He waved toward a
large piece of poster board stuck to the wall.  It contained twelve
photos, with a few paragraphs beneath each, and a cigarette graphic
beneath about half I assume to indicate that the juror smoked. Stepping
forward, I examined the faces in the photos a little more closely.

"It's a fairly even split," Alexander explained, his compulsion to
pontificate finally overwhelming his desire to ignore me.  "Seven are
hard-core locals mostly people with limited education who've never been
fifty miles from this town.  Four of them smoke "

Stone cut in, sounding a little insulted.  "The other five moved here
in the past few years.  They all have college degrees, but don't really
do anything with them.  Mostly work in coffee shops or some kind of
retail.  Hippie types.  People who'd give their eyeteeth to get pot
legalized, but love to bitch and moan about tobacco.  Two of them
smoke, but not much."

That explained why these two local attorneys were doing most of the
heavy lifting in court.  They each represented one of the town's
factions.  The outdoorsy transplants would identify with Reeves, while
the people whose families had started ranching this area a hundred
years ago would be swayed by Stone.  It was a good strategy, since I
couldn't see anyone outside the borders of Manhattan warming up to
Daniel Alexander.

"On an emotional level, there's a lot for the plaintiffs' attorneys to
work with," Reeves said.  "The hippies, as Frank calls them, are very
susceptible to arguments about suffering caused by cigarettes and the
financial burden of health care for the people who get sick.  And .. ."
He glanced at Stone, smiling good-naturedly.  "The rednecks, as I call
them, are just as susceptible to arguments that the industry is taking
advantage of them and thinks they're stupid.  Honestly, our best bet is
going to be playing the rednecks and hippies against each other.
There's a chance that they might not be able to agree out of simple
personal animosity.  That would at least get us a hung jury."

"We can't bond off a two-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar judgment," I
said, stating the obvious.  I decided to go ahead and speak the words
that no industry official had yet uttered outside the walls of Terra:
"If we lose here, it may be the beginning of the end."

The two local attorneys suddenly looked a little ill, obviously
unaccustomed to having the future of a multibillion-dollar industry
hanging on their moderate legal skills.  Daniel Alexander just looked
bored.

"Like I said," Reeves started, "I'm not going to lie to you, Trevor.
It's an uphill battle.  The representatives of the class are really
compelling ..."

Like everyone else in America not in a coma, I was familiar with the
three people representing the five hundred thousand plaintiffs.  Two
were dead and testifying via prerecorded videotape something that did a
fair amount for their credibility.-Both had been upstanding citizens,
both had tried to quit on numerous occasions, both had started when
they were young, and both had cancers strongly linked to smoking.

"Mrs.  Glasco is a major problem for us," Reeves said, referring to the
surviving representative.

"Goddamn schoolteacher," Alexander grumbled.

The faces of the two local attorneys darkened for a moment, but
Alexander didn't seem to notice.

"Mrs.  Glasco is extremely popular in this town," Stone said.  "She
taught first grade for years and has universal appeal."

"The bottom line here," Reeves said, "is pretty much everyone agrees
that the woman's a saint."

"Does that include you?"  I said to Stone.

He shrugged.  "I had a little dyslexia when I was a kid.  She stayed
after school every day to help me with my reading."

"What about you, Steve?"  I said.  "She wasn't your first-grade
teacher, right?  You haven't lived here your whole life."

He shook his head.  "But she taught my two kids."

"And she's milking it like you wouldn't believe," Alexander cut in.
"Rolling around in that goddamn wheelchair with the oxygen tank on the
back and talking about God all the time.  God this, God that.  God's
coming to take me away.  You have to give the plaintiffs' attorneys
credit.  Unless there were nuns or crippled children available, they
couldn't have picked a better representative of their class."

I nodded thoughtfully, trying to maintain the illusion I knew what I
was doing.  "And the judge?"

"Openly hostile, but a stickler for the law," Alexander said quickly.
"Read Hamilton v. Reid or Lucas v. Dawson and you'll get a feel for the
fact that he doesn't let his personal feelings get in the way.  He set
aside a jury verdict in Hamilton for legal reasons despite the fact
that it was well known he agreed with the verdict personally."

Stone and Reeves looked at him, seemingly a bit perplexed.  They
probably hadn't bothered to go back and comb through the judge's record
to get a feel for his personality.  I guess that's why Alexander's was
a household name and theirs weren't.

I pulled the pad from my briefcase and jotted down what he had said.  I
was anxious to go back with at least a few morsels of good news,
preferably in sufficient detail to make me look like I had some clue of
what I was doing.  I had no idea where I stood with Paul Trainer, but
it seemed certain that displaying a little competence and diligence
couldn't hurt.

"So you're saying that if the jury comes up with a huge award, the
judge might overturn it?  Then we wouldn't have to worry about an
appeals bond?"

"Based on his history, it's possible," Alexander said, starting to warm
up to the subject.  "Obviously, we're going to try to win it outright,
but this is at least some kind of a fallback if the jury goes off the
deep end and decides to hand that damn schoolteacher a quarter of a
trillion dollars."

Nine.

I PUSHED ASIDE THE REMNANTS OF A PLATE OF BAcon and eggs and
immediately started sucking up an order of biscuits and gravy.  A few
hours ago, I'd claimed a prized table by the windows and I felt
obligated to keep eating as long as I was tying it up.

I concentrated on my food, ignoring the over caffeinated stares of the
oddly sophisticated-looking people packed into the diner with me.
Ho-mogenously dressed in a style that could only be described as "urban
safari," they'd replaced the weathered, baseball-cap-wearing men who'd
left an hour ago, and had been waiting to get their hands on my booth
ever since.

"I've got a bet with the cook that you can't finish that."

The waitress bent over a little as she filled my coffee cup, and the
male patrons of the diner realigned their covetous gazes for a
moment.

"Really?  I was just about to order a Danish."

She was one of those girls who managed to be even more intriguing in a
horrible polyester uniform because it forced you to imagine her without
it.  A welcome distraction.

"I haven't seen you in here.  Are you with the rest of these guys?  Are
you a reporter, too?"

"Just passing through," I said and she strolled off, looking kind of
disappointed.

I shoveled another bite of sodden biscuit in my mouth, chewing
lazily,

and turning my attention back to my unobstructed view of the courthouse
across the street.

Angus Scalia was standing on the top step, speaking with malicious
relish to an enthusiastic crowd that he'd undoubtedly bussed in.  I
couldn't hear him, but I was close enough to see his thick lips
distorting and the sweat stains appearing beneath the armpits of his
shirt.  He turned to the side, revealing his infamous Alfred Hitchcock
profile, and jabbed a finger at the building behind him.

The crowd started to applaud, creating a vague hiss that penetrated the
window.  I leaned in a little closer to the glass, managing to pick out
his voice, but unable to understand what he was saying.  Probably
comparing people involved in the production of cigarettes to Satan.  Or
Hitler.  Or smallpox.  Or Jack the Ripper.

Despite his tendency for going a little over the top, it had always
been hard for me to dismiss Scalia as the quixotic crackpot my
colleagues nervously labeled him as.  He was the only anti tobacco
crusader I knew of who actually had an agenda.  I know it sounds
cynical, but antismoking lobbyists are perhaps the most ineffectual
bunch of yahoos who ever walked the face of the earth.  The simple
secret to controlling them and believe me, the tobacco industry did was
making sure they were well funded.  Every time Big Tobacco took a hit
and had to pay out some money, it "reluctantly" included tens of
millions of dollars in installment payments for antismoking efforts.
Then we'd slip in a clause that said any reduction in industry profits
would reduce these payments.  So, easy as pie, we turned the
antismoking organizations into self-perpetuating machines with
absolutely no real incentive to reduce smoking.  Clever?  Not really.
These guys were just too easy.

Except for Scalia.  He resisted every effort to latch him to the
tobacco teat and missed no opportunity to denounce his antismoking
compatriots for the bunch of clowns they were.  As near as I could
tell, the man was hated by almost everyone involved: his colleagues,
Big Tobacco, the government, smokers.  Everybody but the media.

He was an amazing sound-bite guy a man who could easily be riled up
enough to spray spit all over the camera lens and almost always looked
like he was inches away from a serious cardiac event.  No two ways
about it: That just made plain good television.  And now, with the
Montana suit in full swing, his politically impossible ranting was
starting to resonate.  He seemed less like he was tilting at windmills
and more like a man who, through sheer, unwavering persistence, might
turn out to be a winner.

"Uh oh," I mumbled through a mouthful of gravy.  They were giving him a
microphone.

"I'd like to bring someone up here who needs no introduction ..."  The
sound of his voice vibrated the glass next to me and caused the other
patrons of the diner to start slapping money down and running for the
door.

The old woman being pushed by one of the plaintiffs' lawyers waved
weakly as the crowd thickened not only from the weight of the reporters
abandoning the diner, but also from townspeople who happened to be
walking by.  They all looked up at her with a sad reverence that made
my stomach tense.

Steve Reeves had given me Mrs.  Glasco's deposition, and I'd skimmed it
last night before I'd gone to bed.  She was only sixty-five, though
chemo had added about twenty years, as it always seemed to.  She still
lived in a neat but tiny house that was all she'd ever been able to
afford.  Since her husband died and she'd gotten sick, the local kids
took care of her yard and whenever anything went wrong with the house,
it just got fixed by one of her former students at no charge.  The only
conclusion I could come to was that she wasn't human.  No one was that
well liked.  I mean, I'd always hated my teachers.

She just sat quietly, her wheelchair dangerously close to the steps,
while Scalia railed against the people who had done this to her the
people who had addicted her at a young age while suppressing
information about the dangers of the habit, the people who had tried to
negate the government warnings through smooth denials and slick
advertising.  The people who now fought tooth and nail to shirk their
responsibility to her.

The sad thing was that it seemed like that was all there was left of
Mrs.

Glasco.  She was now just potential income to her attorneys, potential
losses to my company, a poster child to the antismoking lobby.  And
when she died, no one would ever think about her again.

No, that wasn't true.  There were still the kids she'd taught a whole
townful of them.  They'd remember her as more than a political
lightning rod.

The pretty waitress came around again as I dropped a twenty on the
table and stood.  "I win," she said.

"What?"

"You couldn't finish it."

"Oh yeah.  Right."  I started for the door but then stopped and turned
back toward her.  "Did you have Mrs.  Glasco?"

"Nah," she said cheerfully.  "I had Mrs.  Blake."

I JOGGED ACROSS the street, the still-cold air cutting through the
front of my dress shirt while the sun burned into the back.

"We've put up with hundreds of years of this," Scalia shouted as I
melted into the outer ring of his audience.  "Hundreds of years of
lies.  Hundreds of years of manipulation.  Hundreds of years of death.
But now we have the power to send a message to take the first real step
toward stopping this murder machine."

Scalia wasn't an elegant speaker too prone to cliches and melodrama but
those technical failings never seemed to lessen his impact.

"How many have they killed over the years?  How much have they cost
this country ?"

I glanced at my watch and confirmed I was running late.  Our lawyers
had invited me to observe some of the trial before I went back.
Honestly, I didn't see the point, but it might make me seem more
diligent and interested if I showed up for a little while.

I skirted around the edges of the crowd while Scalia continued on
pretty much the same oratory path.  I'd nearly made it to the steps
when he fell silent for a moment.

"Look right down here!"  he suddenly boomed.

I tried to squeeze between a woman and the baby carriage she was
standing next to, but ended up having to take the long way around.

"I want you all to look right here!"

I happened to glance up at just that moment and discovered that he was
pointing right at me.  I froze with one foot on the steps.

"Do you know who this man is?"  he asked the crowd.  "He's Trevor
Barnett.  His family has been one of the most powerful forces in
tobacco for almost two hundred years."

I knew I should just lower my head and run for the courthouse doors,
but I couldn't seem to move.  How did he know who I was?  I remembered
Stan's paranoid ranting.

They've got files... "The industry must be worried," Scalia said as I
stood there like a deer in his headlights.  "We must have them scared
for them to send one of their own here."

Ten.

By ten 'til eight, I was already wading through the cubicle farm
bordering my office the earliest I could remember ever setting foot in
Terra's headquarters.  It wasn't intentional: I'd planned to play
things cool, since I figured my fate was already pretty much
determined.  But I'd come wide-awake at six A.M. and every effort to
roll over and fall asleep again had failed.  Nicotine almost had a
heart attack when I'd pounced on her in her dog bed.  Paybacks were
hell.

About a quarter of the staff was already in, but none were working
mostly they were milling around talking and searching for coffee.  I
tried to act relaxed, shoving my hands in my pockets and smiling
serenely at people who seemed to be fighting an urge to back away.

I guess it was possible that my smile wasn't + serene.  I'd managed to
keep my mind reasonably clear through a rare display of willpower, but
there wasn't anything I could do about the nervous excitement in my
stomach.  Intellectually, I knew none of this had anything to do with
me that I was just a pawn in a game that was inevitably going to end
badly for me.  But it was hard not to pretend just a little.  I mean,
I'd been sent on Paul Trainer's personal jet to interpret one of the
most important events in the long history of tobacco.  It wouldn't hurt
to let myself enjoy that for just a little while.  In a few days,
Trainer would have made his point to my father and he'd can me.  There
would be plenty of time then to scrape and grovel.  There always was.

I could hear rustling coming from Stan's cube and I flopped my forearms
across the top of it, laying my chin on them: one of the benefits of
being tall in the world of the modern office.

"What's going on, man?"

He seemed a little startled to see me.

"You're in early, Trevor."  i

By now, everyone on the floor knew about my report to the board and
that Paul Trainer had come to my office yesterday.  The gossip mill
would be working overtime: speculating, polling contacts on other
floors, rehashing my history at the company.  Did everyone seem
skittish because they'd concluded I was the walking dead?  Did they
think Paul Trainer was going to send a bunch of goons down here to get
rid of me and everyone I'd ever known?

"Couldn't sleep.  So what's the word, Stan?"

He didn't seem to want to scoot back in his chair, so he had to crane
his thick neck to see me.  It was like he wanted to look like he was
working.

"Nothing interesting, Trevor.  It's been busy, you know?"

I laughed.  "Yeah, right."

A silence started to spread out between us, and I decided to just let
it happen.  I didn't have anything better to do.

Finally, Stan got uncomfortable enough to speak again.  "I saw you on

TV."

For some reason, that hadn't occurred to me.  Thinking about it now, it
did seem a little unlikely that the media would ignore a face-to-face
confrontation between Angus Scalia and the old tobacco money they
figured I represented.

"Really?"

"What an asshole," Stan said.  "You should have decked him.  Knocked
him on his fat ass."

And that was it.  He didn't ask why I'd been there or what I'd learned
about the suit that might or might not put him out of work.  He just
smiled politely, put his head down, and dug into a stack of papers on
his desk.

When I eased through his office door, Paul Trainer jumped out of his
chair and threw an arm around my shoulders.  All in all, not an easy
maneuver for someone his height and age.

"How was your trip, Trevor?  Good?  How'd you like the jet?"

"It was fine, sir.  Thank you for asking."

He motioned toward three men standing by a silver cart parked in the
far corner of his office.  Two of the men helping themselves to
pastries and coffee were board members I recognized but whose names I
couldn't remember.  They each gave me a polite nod.  My father didn't
bother to turn around, instead dumping some cream in his coffee and
taking a seat at the table.

"We saw you on TV," Trainer continued energetically.  "You looked good.
A little slack jawed.  But good."

Kind of hard to know how to respond to that, so I didn't.

"Well?"  Trainer said, releasing me and sitting down behind the table
my father was ignoring me from.  The others did the same but I wasn't
invited, so I just stood my ground and started into a summary of what
I'd done over the last twenty-four hours.  Not an easy thing to screw
up, no matter how scared you are.  I let my eyes wander across the
low-hanging portraits on the wall, hoping that I would appear to be
confidently scanning my audience and not looking slightly over their
heads.

"... then finally, yesterday, I sat through an entire day of court
before I flew back last night."

Trainer was wearing a slightly impatient expression but was making an
uncharacteristic effort to hide it.

"And?"

"Based on what I saw, the jury's against us.  The plaintiffs' attorneys
are doing a good job of painting the industry as evil, and the jury's
buying it.  The judge seems to be personally against us, too, but I'm
not sure that's going to hurt us."

My father surprised me by speaking up.  "How so?"

I didn't answer immediately.  Was he actually asking my opinion?

"Well, in Hamilton v. Reid and Lucas v. Dawson you can see that he
doesn't let his personal feelings get in the way.  He set aside a jury
verdict in Hamilton that he personally agreed with."  The statement was
more or less directly plagiarized from Dan Alexander, but I figured I'd
be better off not trying to paraphrased former Harvard Law professor.

"I'm not sure that's a completely accurate interpretation of the
facts," my father said in a sympathetic tone that lacked even a shred
of sincerity.  "In Hamilton v. Reid the judge reversed the jury in
favor of a stro: gly held personal belief not against it.  It was later
struck down by the appellate court."  He looked directly at me with a
disappointed expression that made me feel like I was twelve again.  "I
know it can be confusing."

My mind completely locked.  I was sure I hadn't confused anything
Alexander had said.  But somehow I must have.  He was one of the
country's top attorneys.  He didn't make mistakes.

"And in Lucas v. Dawson," my father continued, "the judge had fairly
well-documented political reasons for reversing the verdict.  I think
everyone here is familiar with them.  This case is obviously different.
The political benefit accrues from going against us.  It also feeds his
ego, which is something else he's prone to."

No!  I was sure.  I'd written Alexander's words exactly as he'd spoken
them.  "But this came straight from Da "

"I think you just misunderstood him, Trevor.  I'm confident that Daniel
understands these two verdicts they're fairly simple in the scheme of
things.  He was probably just making a joke and assuming that you'd
have reviewed the cases before you went out there."

I felt the now-familiar sensation of blood rushing to my face, and I
would have turned my back and walked out if I could have made my feet
move.

Trainer finally spoke up, earning him what I thought at the time would
be my undying gratitude.

"Then what I'm hearing is that everybody's against us on this.  The
jury's gonna screw us purely out of spite, and this judge is going to
go along for the ride no matter how illegal and emotional the verdict
is."

"We haven't lost yet, Paul," my father said.

"I'm starting to wonder, Edwin ... What do you figure my odds are?"

"It's hard to say.  I mean "

"What are my odds?"  Trainer repeated.

I considered backing up and slipping out the door.  I hadn't been
dismissed, but it seemed like that was just because everyone had
forgotten I was there.

"I don't think you can "

"Jesus Christ, Edwin!  It's a simple question!  What are my goddamn
odds?"

"One chance in five we win," my father finally conceded.

"Thank you!  One in five.  That's a number I can work with.  So what
you're telling me is that before long, I and the other CEOs are going
to have a two-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar judgment that we can't
bond off no matter how certain the outcome of the appeal might be.
You're telling me that I'm completely at the mercy of twelve cowboys
sitting in a jury box in Montana.  And you're telling me that there's
nothing I can do but bend over and take it."

"This isn't about the plaintiffs," my father said.  "It's about the
attorneys.  And they're going to want their money.  They'll settle,
toss their clients some spare change, and walk away rich."

"Only a few billion?"  Trainer mocked.  "And what about the fifty
thousand ambulance chasers who are lined up watching what's happening
in Montana and licking their chops?  We're going to find ourselves
fighting class actions from people because they think it's our fault
that they can't take a satisfying dump.  We're going to spend the next
ten years being bled to a slow, lingering death."

I started edging backward as Trainer pulled a cigarette from a pack
lying in front of him and lit it.  His skinny chest expanded visibly as
he pulled on it.

"You know what I feel?  I feel pleasure, calm, familiarity ...
Relaxation," he said, then walked over to me and handed me the
cigarette.  "Tell me something, Trevor.  What do you feel?"

I took an unusually long drag, feeling the smoke fill my lungs and the
weight of everyone's eyes on me.

To this day, I have no idea why I didn't just paraphrase what Trainer
had said.  Maybe I wanted to show off for my father.  Maybe
subconsciously I still wanted that pink slip and the terrifying freedom
that would accompany it.

"I feel..."  My voice faded for a moment.  "I feel hyperplasia of the
ep-itheleial cells turning to pre invasive lesions.  I feel carcinogens
penetrating the nucleuses of my cells and mutating their genetic
makeup, I feel my cilia being slowly paralyzed ..."

The people at the table my father especially were so still they looked
kind of like the propped-up corpses of Old West bank robbers.  Trainer,
on the other hand, nodded thoughtfully, relieved me of the cigarette,
and wandered back to his seat.

"Trevor's right," he said.  "The danger is all anyone thinks about now.
They want to have their cake and eat it too.  They want all the
pleasure and none of the risk."

"That's not right," I heard myself say.

"Trevor, that's enough ...," my father cautioned.

Trainer held a hand up, silencing him.  "What's not right?"

"They want the risk," I said.  "It's part of the image now.  They just
want to be one of the lucky ones."

Trainer smiled.  "And if you turn out not to be one of the lucky ones
you want to be able to tell yourself that you're not responsible.  You
want to spend the last days of your life trying to prove to yourself
that it's someone else's fault you're dying."  He nodded respectfully
in my direction.  "I stand corrected, Trevor."

Eleven.

Darkness had brought cooler temperatures for the first time I could
remember that summer, and I turned the air-conditioning off in favor of
a rolled-down window.  I was probably twenty miles from town, bumping
down a maze of bad roads cut out of the area's rich farmland.  A piece
of paper containing an elaborate set of directions was taped to my
dashboard, and I was forced to slow at every intersection to search for
obscure landmarks.

The empty road came to a T near a collapsed barn and, for no reason, I
eased the car to a full stop.  The notes I'd taken in my meeting with
Daniel Alexander were sitting on the passenger seat, and I suddenly
felt a compulsion to read them for a fifth time.  I reached out, but
then withdrew my hand.  There was nothing to find in those pages I'd
written them verbatim.  Had my father been right?  Had I just confused
Alexander's deadpan delivery of an unfunny joke?  There was a much more
obvious explanation, of course, but I wasn't ready to think about it.
Not yet.  My world was already getting way too complicated.

I reached for the notes again, this time finding the strength (or
weakness, I'm not sure) to throw them out the window and floor the car
around the corner.  For a while, it felt like they were chasing me.

I swung the car left when I reached an unmarked dirt driveway and
followed it to an old farmhouse that had been rescued from returning to
the soil by haphazard carpentry and slapped-on paint.

My suspicion that there was no light coming from it was confirmed when
I turned off my car and stepped out into the darkness.  I stumbled over
the uneven ground, cursing quietly, until I finally made it to the
relative safety of the porch.  The moment my feet hit the loose boards,
the front door swung open to reveal the blackness inside.

I stepped across the threshold and watched a shadowy figure close the
door behind me then followed cautiously as the figure started for the
back of the house.

The sudden glare when the door at the back of the kitch.n opened forced
me to shade my eyes with my hand.  I slipped in quickly and my escort
did the same, slamming the door immediately behind us to keep the
escaping illumination from giving away our position to the imagined
tobacco industry commandos hovering just outside.

"Did you have any trouble finding the place?"  John O'Byrne asked,
giving my hand a grave, but thorough shaking.  He was the founder and
director of Smokeless Youth, a small but influential anti tobacco lobby
group aimed, not surprisingly, at reducing teen smoking.

"None at all, John.  Sorry I had to cancel on you before."

"No apology necessary.  I understand how difficult your situation is."
He pointed to a chair.  "Have a seat."

I lowered myself into a rickety chair that seemed barely able to
support my weight and O'Byrne did the same, positioning himself
directly across a small table that looked like it had been in the room
since the house was built.

So why was I sitting down with the enemy?  Kind of a long story.

After the industry had agreed to pay hundreds of billions to reimburse
the states for their medical costs in return for the promise that they
wouldn't sue again, tobacco stocks had enjoyed a substantial increase
in value and my trust checks had briefly swelled.  Flush with cash but
still plagued by a vague sense of guilt that my halfhearted forays into
religion, philosophy, and self-help hadn't expunged, I'd given SY a
fairly sizeable donation.  The theory here was that I'd part with a
little of what I'd made from dooming Mrs.  Glasco and people like her
to cancer, thus tidying my soul and easing my conscience.  As it turned
out, giving away a bunch of money I hadn't done anything to earn didn't
have much of an effect on my soul one way or another.  So, in the end,
the applicable theory was "easy come, easy go."

Ironically, the industry's seemingly unstoppable lawsuit-induced slide
began shortly after my donation and it quickly became apparent that I'd
actually given more than I could afford.  So from a spiritual
standpoint, I'd paid a whole lot for absolutely nothing.

Well, not absolutely nothing.  I'd unintentionally landed an unpaid
position on the board of SY.  John, like most anti tobacco pundits,
liked only one thing better than building his permanent home on the
moral high ground, and that was feeling like he was putting something
over on the industry.  In me, he'd recruited an insider a spy, if you
will that he could use to ... Well, to do whatever it was he did.

If I'm such a cynic, why even accept a position on the board? Moreover,
why continue to shamelessly maintain the illusion that another big
check was right around the corner, even though I was broke? I had my
reasons.

"You're sure you weren't followed?"  O'Byrne said.  "We picked this
location because you'd be able to see a tail for miles."

"Positive," I said.

"We saw you on TV," he said, motioning toward his assistant, sitting
next to him.  "What were you doing in Montana?"

O'Byrne had a somewhat gaunt, excitable face and constantly busy hands
that were strangely infectious.  He gave everything the same urgency as
a child holding a secret meeting in a tree house.

"Paul Trainer asked me to go and evaluate what was going on up there."
I was a little embarrassed at the spark of false pride I felt when I
spoke.

"Paul Trainer?  You're talking directly to Trainer now?  When did this
happen?"

"Just a few days ago.  But I don't think it's a big deal.  He just
wanted a different perspective."

"Jesus, Trevor!  Not a big deal!  If you could cultivate a relationship
with Paul Trainer, can you imagine what it could mean for us?"

I honestly couldn't.

"So what is going on in Montana?  What did you find out?"

"I think we're going to lose," I said.  "You wouldn't believe what a
circus it's turned into."

"I saw you and Scalia face off."  O'Byrne said.  "It was on every
channel."  He shook his head slowly, as though Scalia was a crazy
brother-in-law who'd knocked over a liquor store.  Then he changed the
subject.  "This could be the turning point, for us, Trevor.  Seriously
historic stuff.  What do you think the companies will do if they
lose?"

"I don't know.  I guess they'd all bankrupt themselves and then "

"Of course they will just more of the same.  More repugnant legal
maneuvering.  But this time they won't get away with it.  Do you think
the Montana attorneys will hold to the judgment?  That they'll go for
the whole amount and make the companies sell off their assets and close
their doors?"

I shook my head.  "I think "

"No, you're probably right.  They'll want to be paid.  But they'll get
their pound of flesh.  They'll get a few billion ..."

It went on like that for half an hour: John asking me questions and
then answering them himself.  As always, he talked in the broad,
flowery language of the antismoking lobby, but was polite enough to
tread carefully around words like evil and murder in deference to my
genealogy.  I didn't pay much attention.  I nodded, let out a few
encouraging grunts, and pretended to look at him when I was really
concentrating on his assistant in my peripheral vision.  She sat
motionless through the entire thing, staring straight ahead as though
she could almost see the smoke-free Utopia that America's next
generation would be born into.  Or maybe she just wasn't paying
attention either.

So there it (she) was: the reason I'd stayed on at Smokeless Youth
after it became obvious that it wasn't going to provide me with any
meaningful illusion of absolution.  John's assistant, Anne Kimball.

At thirty-one, she was one year my junior and, unlike me, she'd
actually accomplished something in that time.  She'd graduated with
honors from the University of Pennsylvania and gone to Georgetown Law
on a scholarship.  After graduation, she'd signed on with a D.C law
firm and by all reports had been on her way to doing big things.  That
promising career, though, had been cut short when she suddenly quit and
joined SY for what had to have been an eighty percent pay cut.  Her
colleagues had tsk-tsked, used words like burnout and nervous
breakdown, then fought like pregnant wolverines to get their hands on
her office.

What they hadn't known about Anne is that her mother had died horribly
(it was the most popular way) of lung cancer about ten years ago, after
smoking a pack and a half a day for nearly her entire life.  It seemed
likely that it was her memory that had prompted Anne to chuck
everything and go to work for John.

"It's all lining up, Trevor.  It's all finally moving in our
direction."

I nodded automatically and continued to watch Anne as O'Byrne went on.
And on.

My best guess was that she was almost a foot shorter than me, though
she tended not to let me get close enough to get a firm estimate.  Her
face was extraordinarily round, contrasted by a straight nose and a set
of supernaturally green eyes.  Her hair was an unremarkable brown,
pulled back in a long ponytail that didn't seem to fit with her
wardrobe, which tended toward formless ness and Maoist grays.  Despite
that less-than-colorful paper description, though, she was the most
striking woman in the world.  To me, at least.

"Now's when we hit them, Trevor!  This is our moment!"  O'Byrne reached
across the table and grabbed my forearm, forcing me to refocus on
him.

"The Montana suit, the new surgeon general's report... The industry's
as weak as it's been in a hundred years.  It's time."

"Time for what, John?"

"Time to hit them!  And hit them hard."

I raised my eyebrows, prompting him to give me a little more detail on
just how he planned to deliver this deathblow.

"The surgeon general's report says that five million teens are smoking.
Five million!  It's a huge number with enormous impact, Trevor.  It's a
number that'll wake people up particularly with everything that's
happening."

I chewed the nail of my index finger for a moment.  "Actually, John,
didn't the report say that five million teens smoked one cigarette in
the last month?  That's doesn't really make them smokers..."

"Who cares?  Are you trying to say that the tobacco industry's never
exaggerated or told half-truths to drive their point home?  We're going
to show them that we've got the guts to play their game."

I glanced over and saw Anne rolling her eyes.  When she raught me
looking, she quickly redirected her gaze to the floor and conjured up
an expression of steely determination.

She was one of those rare people who sincerely believed in what she was
doing.  I had no doubt that when she'd signed on at SY, she'd figured
she could use her limitless intelligence, creativity, and passion to
slowly dismember the industry that killed her mother.  It was hard not
to wonder how long it took before reality set in.  How long before she
realized she'd be spending half her time managing John O'Byrne's ego
and the other half groveling for donations that would be pissed away on
showy but ultimately pointless antismoking initiatives.  Life had a
funny way of taking good intentions and ramming them back down your
throat.

"What do you figure the industry will do when we roll out with a
campaign based on that number?"  O'Byrne asked.  "How hard do you think
they'll come after us?"

What he wanted to hear was "Pretty hard."  He was hoping for a backlash
weak enough that it wouldn't really hurt him but strong enough that it
would be obvious to the world that he, John Samuel O'Byrne, had
inserted a thorn into the lion's paw.

And I reckoned that's exactly what he'd get.  The companies would draft
a tepid protest and mail it off, making sure it didn't have anything in
it that might scare him off.  You see, nothing made the tobacco
industry happier than when the hapless antismoking lobby exaggerated
the number of teen smokers.  Basically, the message they were sending
was: Come on, everybody's doing it.  A powerful statement when aimed at
an age group that puts the importance of fitting in just ahead of food
and air.

"They'll come after you," I said, sounding a little apathetic, even to
myself.  "But it won't be anything you can't handle."

John leaned back into his chair and folded his arms across his chest.
"This campaign is coming at just the right time, Trevor.  We're really
going to do something here."

"Yeah?"

"This could be it," he said again.  "This could be a turning point."

I had no idea what this "it" he kept bringing up was.  And if this was
a turning point, what direction would we end up in?  The fundamental
problem with the antismoking lobby was that they had no real goal.
Compare their ethereal moralizing with the very clear and quantifiable
goals of their opponents.  I can tell you with complete certainty that
it was Terra's holy quest to hopelessly addict every man, woman, and
child on the planet to cigarettes.

Not that this was as sinister as it sounded.  They were a company in
the business of selling product.  I assume that McDonald's wanted to
hopelessly addict every man, woman, and child on the planet to Big Macs
and Jeep wanted to hopelessly addict every man, woman, and child on the
planet to SUVs.

"What do you think Trevor?"  Anne said, looking directly at me for the
first time that night.  "The Montana suit, the surgeon general's
report, this campaign.  Is this a turning point?"

She caught me a little off guard.  Generally, all I had to do in these
meetings was daydream about her and occasionally nod.  "Uh, sure.  I
guess "

"And you could be a cornerstone to all this," O'Byrne interjected.
"With you close to Trainer, we've finally got a man inside .. ."

The meeting had been over for fifteen minutes, but I hadn't gone home
yet.  I was smoking a cigarette beneath the broad branches of a
magnolia tree just to the side of the house's overgrown driveway.
O'Byrne had driven away in his respectably worn Jetta after shaking my
hand with the energy of a man on the hunt for a donation.  Anne was
still inside cleaning up.

It was another five minutes before she appeared on the porch, juggling
a few files while she tried to pull the door closed behind her.  My
heart started to beat a little faster as I ground out my cigarette and
stepped from the moon shadow of the tree.  She didn't come to a dead
halt when she saw me, but she did slow to a more uncertain pace as she
continued toward her car.  I matched her speed and we met at the
driver's side door.  She didn't take into account that my eyes were
better adjusted to the darkness and didn't immediately hide the trace
of fear on her face.  Suddenly I felt like a stalker.

"I admire your effort, Anne your guts for attacking," I said.  Despite
twenty minutes of standing around, that was the best opening line I'd
been able to compose.

"Yeah, well I guess we'll have the admiration of the whole tobacco
industry before long," she said, concentrating on opening the door to
her much more than respectably dilapidated Pontiac something or other.
"When should I expect the roses from your marketing department?"

"I don't have a marketing department, Anne.  I "

She turned to face me, and I had to fight an urge to step back.  A few
hundred years ago, those eyes probably would have gotten her burned at
the stake.

"So how's it feel to be a cornerstone, Trevor?"  The frustration was
clearly audible in her voice.

"A what?"

"You heard John.  You're going to be a big part of this going forward.
Quite an opportunity for you."

When I'd first started on the board, my relationship with Anne had been
pretty good.  Really good, actually.  But it hadn't taken her long to
see my involvement in SY for what it was a cheap attempt to absolve my
sins.  And I think it made her angry to see me dabbling pointlessly in
something that had become the focus of her life.

"I guess ..."

She tossed her files into the open car and then looked up at me again.
When she spoke this time, her tone had moderated.  In less than a
minute, we'd gone from fear, to anger, to professionalism.  The last
was the worst by far.

"I'm sorry if I seem rude, Trevor.  I guess I'm just a little tired."

At least she didn't call me Mr.  Barnett.

"No problem."

She squinted at me through the darkness as though she was searching for
something.  When she didn't find it, she climbed into her car and
started the motor.

My original plan was to ask her out to dinner.  For some reason, recent
events had given me a new and unfamiliar measure of resolve.  I didn't
understand the effect and I didn't know how long it would last, so I
figured I'd better use it quick.

Now having completely abandoned that plan, I stepped back and let her
throw her car into gear.  She cranked up the stereo and I listened to
Ian Kingwell's three-pack-a-day voice and grinding guitars as she
pulled out into the road.

Twelve.

For the second time that week, I was staring at my ceiling by six
a.m.

My world, which until recently hadn't provided me with much that I
couldn't avoid contemplating, was quickly becoming completely
unfathomable.  How to interpret the intricate plot Paul Trainer was
hatching to completely destroy my life, my worsening relationship with
my father, my mortifying performance in the boardroom, my nonexistent
relationship with Anne?

My plan to free myself from all this seemed to be backfiring and I had
no one to blame but myself.  Another half-assed execution of a
perfectly workable plan in a life already brimming with those kinds of
gaffes.

As I lay there waiting for Nicotine to launch her morning attack, I
tried to convince myself to blow off work and use the time to write my
resume.  I was still afraid of the world out there but, for the first
time, that wasn't the reason I knew that I was going to get up, get
dressed, and make the drive to my office.

Nothing had really ever gone very wrong in my life.  Similarly, nothing
had ever gone very right.  Despite a few rather depressing moments over
the last few days, I had to admit that they'd been kind of... exciting.
It was hard not to feel a little like a child fascinated by everything
and desperate to be accepted by the grown-ups.  I was back to the good
old days when poisonous cleaning products and wall outlets glowed hot
with the promise of untold adventure.

" "Morning," I said.  "What's going on?"

The people laying siege to Stan's cubicle tried with moderate success
to keep the intimidation, curiosity, and worry from registering on
their faces.  Within thirty seconds, everyone had remembered a critical
meeting, phone call, or memo that had to be dealt with right away.  I
watched them hurry off in the general direction of the coffee room.

My list of friends was dwindling fast, and I felt the impact of that
more than I thought I would.  It occurred to me how little it would
take for me to be completely alone in the world.  I'd never really
inventoried and categorized my friends and family before and wouldn't
recommend it as a fun way to spend an afternoon.  The outcome can be
kind of startling.

I leaned over the wall of Stan's cube and gave him my widest,
friendliest smile.  "So?  What's hap pining man?"

"Not much."

I'd swear he was better dressed than usual.  His shirt was pressed and
his tie seemed almost stylish.

"Oh, come on.  Throw me a bone, " I said, paraphrasing what he'd been
saying to me every day for years.  "You're killing me, here."

He remained silent.

"Did someone discover his girlfriend having a lesbian affair with his
mother and shoot up a post office?"  I prompted.

He shook his head.

"Did some guy get drunk and run his car into the bleachers during a
high-school football game, then open up with an assault rifle?"

That elicited the beginnings of a smile.  "I wish."  He folded his arms
across his thick chest, displaying larger-than-normal sweat stains
under his arms.

"Truth is, Trevor, you're going on.  You're getting kind of famous."

"Infamous," I said.  Word of my meltdown in the board meeting had
undoubtedly oozed down to this floor by now.

"I don't know," Stan said, now crossing his legs in an impressive
display of paranoid body language.  "Everyone's wondering if they
should start calling you sir."

He was testing the waters; handling me.  After nine years of doing
everything I could to fit in here, I was being handled by my best
friend at the company.

"Jesus, Stan.  I went to Montana to put some historical perspective on
the trial, made an ass out of myself on TV, and then made an even worse
ass out of myself in the boardroom.  I don't think they're going to
give me a corner office anytime soon."

He managed to grin, but it looked like it took some effort.  "Sure,
man.  I know."

And after that fairly ambiguous statement, he just sat there with his
arms and legs in knots, wishing me away.  The clear message was that he
had enough on his plate with the anti tobacco lobby, the government,
the media, and the court system.  He didn't need to deal with a spy.

I stood there for longer than I should have, finally disengaging myself
from the top of his cubicle and walking, head down, to my office.

"Chris Carmen wants to see you," Ms.  Davenport said as I sulked by.

"When?"

"He said whenever you have a minute."

I sighed and pushed through the door to my office.  Chris's ability to
call me into a meeting was one of the few unequivocal powers he had
over me, and he enjoyed using it.  Now it was "whenever you have a
minute."

I leafed through my mail without much interest until I came upon a
package from Darius's company.  I tore it opened and found a CD with a
sticky note on it that said simply, "You're gonna like this one."

I was about to toss it aside, but ended up sticking it in my computer
instead.  A few moments later the beta version of Darius's latest game
was filling my screen.  I'm not sure what I was trying to prove, but
whatever it was, I started the game and turned the volume up so it
would be audible over a good half of the floor.

The first level wasn't too difficult, despite the fact that I was born
a few years too late to have split-second thumb timing.  After about
five minutes of mutilating astro-zombies with a Gatling gun, I manage
to procure a key that looked like a flaming skull and my character
advanced to the next level.

I sat back for a moment, admiring the movie like realism as the
muscular, scarred warrior trudged into a futuristic freight elevator. I
was wondering what it was about this particular game that Darius
thought I'd like.  It seemed pretty similar to all the other ones he'd
produced.

Then the animated soldier pulled a pack of smokes from his pocket and
lit one.  He took a tired, dramatic drag and stared down at the floor
with all the fatigue, fear, and pain that living in a world populated
with astro-zombies would likely cause.  When the elevator doors opened
onto a new world full of new dangers, he tossed the half-smoked butt on
the ground and crushed it with a spiked boot.

I realized my mouth was hanging open and managed to close it, but other
than that, I just sat there frozen.  Had Darius included that for me?
As a joke?  Because my trust wasn't paying out and he was trying to
help hook a few kids so I could get a new car?

The screen flickered and the astro-zombies attacked, but my
concentration was blown.  I tapped the Fire button and maneuvered
halfheartedly, managing to hold out for only a few minutes before my
opponents began feasting on my flesh in earnest.

"Doesn't that make you dizzy?"

I spun around in my chair and found Paul Trainer standing right behind
me.  I instantly felt like a twelve-year-old caught extracting a
Playboy from beneath his mattress.

Before I knew what was happening, I heard myself speaking aloud the
words on Darius's note to me.  "I think you're gonna like this, Mr.
Trainer."

It was like the stories you hear from people who die and are brought
back to life: I was outside my body, floating... I watched myself jump
up and offer Trainer my seat, watched myself show him how to work the
gun and how to maneuver the character, and watched myself restart the
game.

For a man who grew up before the invention of the wheel, Trainer did
pretty well.  I occasionally had to jump in and save him with a timely
jab of this key or that, but overall he threw himself into the war
against flesh-eating ghouls with real enthusiasm.

After winning his desperate battle with the king zombie on level one,
Trainer watched his character trudge into the elevator and dig through
his pockets for a cigarette.  By the time it was lit, the initial shock
of being crept up on by one of the world's most powerful industrialists
had worn off and I'd had a few moments to reflect on what a truly
pathetic human being I was.

"Did you do this, Trevor?"

"No!"  I said, trying to regain a little of my dignity.  "I had nothing
to do with it."

He smiled, and I realized that had been exactly the right (wrong?)
answer.  This kind of product placement was illegal, and he assumed I
was just playing the denial game that had become so much a part of the
tobacco industry.

He picked up the sleeve the CD came in, examining the prototype
graphics printed on it.  "How many of these things ship?"

"I have no idea," I said, backing away from him.

"Like hell you don't," he said, grinning conspiratorially.

"Really!  I don't."

"Jesus, Trevor.  I'm not going to hold you to the number.  Ten?  A
hundred?  A thousand?"

I tried not to answer, but wasn't able to hold out for long.  "More.
The guy who owns that company says if one of his games only made as
much as the movie Jurassic Park, he'd consider it a complete flop."

"No shit," Trainer said.  "Any way you could get me one?  I've had a
computer on my desk for years and never found a good use for the damn
thing."

I popped the CD out of my computer and slid it into the sleeve in his
hands.  "It's yours."

"Thanks," he said, as I shifted my weight from foot to foot and tried
to decide whether I was more comfortable with my hands in my pockets or
out.

"Uh, is there something I can do for you, Mr.  Trainer?"

He seemed to have to think about that for a moment before he
remembered.  "Oh, right.  I was wondering if you were going to be at
your father's party this weekend?"

I was vaguely aware that my father was having his annual outdoor
extravaganza on Saturday, but I hadn't been invited in years.  In fact,
I hadn't so much as been asked over to the house for dinner in probably
a good eighteen months.

"You know, I'm not, Mr.  Trainer.  I've .. . I've got other plans."

"Cancel them," he said, standing and starting for the door.

"I don't think "

He stopped suddenly in front of an old poster hanging on my wall and
ran his fingers over the yellowing paper.  "I remember this campaign
..."

The extremely rare poster was from World War II, recalling a time when
green dye was desperately needed to create camouflage.  It depicted a
newly designed pack of cigarettes that was almost completely white
against the background of a speeding tank.  Across the bottom was a
slogan: LUCKY STRIKE GREEN HAS GONE TO War!

"I was ... oh, I don't know, nine?  I used to help my dad after school.
He delivered cigarettes to the stores around Greensboro.  I remember
how proud I felt."

Perhaps appropriately, the real reason for the pack's color change was
the fact that focus groups suggested the green layout didn't appeal to
women a substantial growth market at the time.  America's war effort
was just a convenient (and admittedly brilliant) excuse for the change.
It turned out to be one of the most successful ad campaigns in
history.

"Yeah .. .," Trainer said, seeming a bit lost in himself as he wandered
out of my office and into the complete silence beyond.  "I felt ten
feet tall."

Thirteen.

I didn't pull into my garage, instead coming to a jerky stop in my
driveway and jumping out into the undiminished early evening heat. The
subdivision I lived in wasn't new, and therefore didn't suffer from
that cramped monotony the modern world seemed so fond of.  Most of my
neighbors had lived there for at least a quarter century, leaving the
area depressingly quiet and devoid of the children that should have
been playing in sprinklers, riding down the sidewalk on skateboards,
and lamenting the inevitable start of school.

I'd put my house on the market three months ago after finally admitting
that tobacco stocks weren't likely to rebound, but no one was
interested.  Hopefully, the ten grand I knocked off the price would get
things moving.  According to my calculations, I was going to have to
sell my car in a couple of months to keep up with the mortgage
payments.

I straightened my for sale sign and trudged toward the house, stopping
on my porch and examining the knife stuck in my front door.  It was
pinning a photograph that depicted two girls in bikinis standing in
front of a star-shaped pool.  Next to them was a large, studly looking
Great Dane, obviously meant for Nicotine.

I pulled the dagger out and went inside, flipping the photo over and
reading the back.

to: trevor from: darius date: tonight re: young girls, drugs, and booze
location: sin simian (Darius's not-as-clever-as-he-thought name for his
party house)

COMMENTS: I TOLD THEM YOU'RE A PEDIATRICIAN WHO JUST RETURNED FROM
TWO

YEARS IN CONGO DODGING COMMUNIST GORRILLAS (his Spelling,

not mine) and feeding starving kids

PEACE BE WITH YOU, MY SON.

Darius had loved what he called "dramatic message vectors" ever since
high school.  The sad thing was that now the job of creating and
delivering these invitations had been delegated to his already
overworked assistant.

Nicotine didn't rush forward to greet me, instead watching with a
slight tilt to her bushy white head as I kicked the door closed.  It
was no mystery why.  I'd been leaving her alone too much over the last
few days and even when I was here, I hadn't been paying attention to
her.  I started to feel a pang of guilt and for some reason it made me
angry.

"What are you looking at?"  I said.  "I'm out there all day, working my
ass off so you can live the good life.  Yeah, you're feeling pretty
sanctimonious now, but what happens when you have to eat the
generic-brand dog biscuits?"

She lowered her head and slinked off.

"That's what I thought," I called after her, deciding not to dwell on
the fact that I was yelling at a dog for being judgmental.

I hit the Play button on my machine and walked into the kitchen
listening to the authoritative voice of my father vibrate the walls.

"Trevor I'm having a party tomorrow.  It starts around noon.  I hope to
see you there."

I leaned back out the door of the kitchen and stared for a moment at
the machine.  What was that all about?  Had Paul Trainer talked to
him?

No, that wouldn't be his style he wasn't a permission asker by nature.
Maybe the invitation was Dad's idea of an apology for making me out to
be a complete jerk in the boardroom?  Didn't seem likely.

I slipped back in into the kitchen and tossed Darius's invitation into
a gigantic stainless-steel trash can centered in the floor, then pulled
a beer from my oversized refrigerator.  I'd spent fifty thousand
dollars making my kitchen into the epitome of modern efficiency a place
where I could exercise my fascination with cuisine and pretend to be a
famous chef.  The rest of the house still looked like a partially
furnished version of the one the Brady Bunch lived in, and according to
my realtor, that had something to do with the fact that it hadn't
sold.

I heard Nicotine's claws tap on the floor behind me and I turned,
crouching as she approached.  "Sorry, girl.  It's been a tough week,
you know?  How about a movie?  Just you and me?"  I retrieved a DVD
hidden in the waistband of my slacks and she grasped it gently in her
jaws, growling playfully.

"Nine o'clock sharp," I told her as she padded toward the living
room.

The area of town I was driving through wasn't bad in the sense that I
thought I was going to get car jacked; it just had kind of a tired
shabbiness to it.  Peeling homes that had been converted to apartment
buildings sat on small, poorly maintained lots and mixed randomly with
cube-shaped buildings advertising services like upholstery and vacuum
cleaner repair.  House numbers weren't plentiful, but there were enough
visible that with a little creative math I was able to calculate
roughly where I was.  When I figured I was within a few blocks of my
destination, I parked next to the curb and continued my search on
foot.

It took about another ten minutes to find the building I was looking
for a white rectangle with space-age architectural embellishments that
suggested it was about forty years old.  I squeezed through the cars
parked in front and jogged up a set of metal stairs, working off some
of my nervous energy before coming face-to-face with number 202.

I'd promised myself that I wouldn't just stand there paralyzed and I
kept that promise, giving the door an immediate authoritarian knock. It
was possible that some of my courage was the result of being sure no
one would be there at nine o'clock on a Friday night, but I chose to
ignore that possibility.

When there was still no sound from inside the apartment after ten
seconds, I relaxed and started for the stairs.  I'd only made it a few
steps before the door opened.

"Trevor?"

I turned casually, as though it was just a chance meeting, and smiled.
She was wearing a long shirt and a pair of sweatpants.  The pink socks
on her feet explained why I hadn't heard her walking on the other side
of her flimsy front door.

"Anne.  Hi.  How are you?"

Through subtle questioning of her boss, I knew that Anne didn't have a
boyfriend.  I assumed that this was simply because she couldn't choose
among all the handsome, muscular, suave, and intelligent men in love
with her.

"How did you know where I live?"

"Uh, well, when I joined the board they gave me a copy of the phone
list."

She considered my explanation for a moment and seemed to find it
plausible.

"Why are you here?"

"I wanted to ask a favor.  May I come in?"

"Is that the favor?"

If I'd been smart, I would have thrown myself over the railing and hit
the ground running.  But that probably would have made our next meeting
even more awkward than it was going to be already.

"No.  I was hoping to ask you the favor while I was inside."

She looked at me like I was there to seduce her into smoking her first
cigarette.  Come on, five million {{ids can't be wrong.

"Um, I'm not sure that's such a good idea."

"Why?"

Undoubtedly she had perfectly good reasons, but they must have all been
too unflattering to say to a guy who helped pay her salary.  She
stepped out of the way, but didn't actually invite me in.  I figured
that was the best I could hope for.

I tried not to be too obvious as I wandered around her apartment and
made the most of my opportunity to snoop into her life outside of work.
She'd painted the walls bright blue and through an open door at the
back of the apartment, I could see an equally startling red surrounding
her unmade bed.  The little kitchenette packed into a corner of the
living area looked impossible to cook in, but was neat and cheerful.
The furnitu.e was strictly Ikea issue, except for an old couch with a
quilt on the back that had the threadbare and outdated look of a family
heirloom.  Next to it on the coffee table was a half-full glass of wine
and a copy of Lonesome Dove.

It was an incredibly warm, comfortable space, and I would have said so
but I'd learned long ago not to comment on people's homes.  They saw it
as patronizing instantly comparing it to the imagined grandeur of my
inherited palace.

"Sorry about the apartment," she said, not turning to face me until
she'd positioned the sofa between us.  "It must be pretty sad compared
to your place."

And sometimes I didn't have to say anything.

"Could I have a glass of water?"

I watched her hair free for the first time as far as I knew sway across
her back as she walked to the sink.

"Seems like there should be some kind of government program to help
lawyers who use their powers for good instead of evil," I said.

"I don't need welfare."

This was going well.

"You wanted a favor?"  she said, handing me a glass that was not so
much Ikea as Pottery Barn.  "Did you need some information ... ?"

"Not really, no."

I took a sip of the water, wetting my quickly drying mouth.

"You know, I was about to make dinner, so ..."

"Do you need some help?"  I said, a little too hopefully.  "I'm a
pretty good chef.  In fact, it's probably what I do better than
anything ..."

Of course, I knew she'd say no, but it was worth a try nothing calmed
me like the weight of a pan in my hand and the smell of simmering
spices.

"No, that's okay.  Thanks, though."

I wanted to take a moment to glance down at the hint of her body
through her baggy clothes, but the way she was staring at me like she
was going to explode with discomfort at any moment suggested I'd better
get to the point.  "My father's having a party tomorrow.  And I need
someone to go with me."

After coming to an initial decision not to go to the party, it had
quickly occurred to me that skipping it would be crazy.  I still knew
that I had to get out of Terra and that I needed to burn enough bridges
behind me that I couldn't easily return.  No point going up in the
flames, though.  Right?

Still, the thought of having to go stand around and make small talk
beneath the disapproving gaze of my father seemed less than appealing.
I needed an ally.

"You .. . Uh, you .. ."

When I'd popped out from beneath that tree a few nights ago, I'd
surprised her but I think this is the first time I'd really caught her
off guard.  She recovered quickly.

"I'm having drinks with some friends tomorrow night."

It was obvious to both of us that she was lying but after years of
building up to this moment, I didn't have the good manners to just walk
away.

"No problem the party starts at noon.  My dad's place isn't far from
here, and there's no way we'd be able to stand it for more than a few
hours anyway."

There was a moment of strangely compelling confusion on her part before
she took the more familiar position of examining the floor.

"Look, Trevor ... I know you do a lot for the organization.  And I
appreciate that.  And I want to apologize again if I came off as mean
last night.  I'm sure you're a good guy and everything, but "

"The party's guest list is going to be pretty much a who's who of the
landed gentry of tobacco.  I'd imagine that the top executives from all
the companies will be there, not to mention politicians and lawyers and
lobbyists.  Ever meet an actual tobacco executive?"

"Just you."

I couldn't help laughing at that.  "I'm not really typical.  I'll bet
Senator Randal will be there.  He almost never passes up an opportunity
to suck up to tobacco money."

"I'm a little ..."  She seemed to lose her train of thought for a
moment and surprised me by walking around the sofa and sitting down.
"I'm not sure what you want from me."

I looked down at her but ended up staring at a framed photograph on the
coffee table instead.  A woman whose hair seemed a little too solid and
tall to have ever been stylish anywhere but in the South stared back
with an uncomfortable grin on her face.  For some reason, I couldn't
break away.  Anne's dead mother seemed to be trying to communicate with
me.

So now that you filled me, you want to have your way with my daughter.
Is that it?

"Trevor?"

I managed to turn back toward Anne, blinking hard.  "I'm sorry.  Did
you say something?"

"I said that I'm not sure what you want from me.  Do you want me to
help you make nice with these people?  You may not have noticed, but
I'm not a big fan of tobacco."

"I didn't say you had to be nice.  Look, Anne.  Things have been really
weird for me at work lately, and I have no idea why I'm even being
invited.  My father and I... well, let's just say we don't get along
that well."

She opened her mouth, undoubtedly to offer some rote sympathy, but I
just kept talking.  "So it would be nice to go with someone whose
agenda is fairly clear.  No matter what it is."

She considered that for a few moments.

"I don't think so, Trevor."

"Why don't you think of it as spying?"  I said.  "An uncensored glimpse
into Big Tobacco.  How many antismoking advocates do you think have
ever been to one of these parties?"

I had to make this work.  I knew myself well enough to know I'd never
come back here again if she turned me down.

"I ... I don't have anything to wear."

The Armani gambit.  In my limited experience, this is generally a
woman's last line of defense.

"Buy something."

"I can't afford to."

"It seems to me that this would be a reasonable business expense.  You
can tell John I signed off on it."

I felt a surge of excitement when, after five seconds, she hadn't
offered another excuse.

"So, say around eleven-thirty?"

Fourteen.

"Hmmmm."  "What?"

"I guess I kind of expected a lawn boy."

I grinned and accelerated along the never-ending dirt road that served
as my father's driveway.  The oak trees that lined it not much more
than sickly sticks in the blurry old photos my great-grandfather had
taken with his newly invented camera now towered fifty feet on either
side.  The sun flashed through them intermittently, bathing Anne in a
constant flow of uneven light.

She was leaning partway out the window, trying not to get too
comfortable in the deep leather passenger seat.  Her dress was
off-white with big red polka dots, and while she was beautiful in it,
it had the look of something borrowed.  Obviously, she hadn't taken me
up on my offer to smooth the way for the abuse of her expense
account.

The most interesting thing, though, was her legs.  I don't mean this to
sound vulgar but with her so intent on great-grandpa's landscaping, I
could stare at them as much as I wanted to as long as I didn't crash
the car.  The clothes she wore to work, whether purposely or
accidentally, hid the subtleties of her figure and left no real
impression other than thinness.  The surprising truth was that she was
perfect.  Long, elegant legs covered in smooth, tan skin.  Small, round
br...  Well, you get the point.

"How many acres does your father have?  It seems like it goes on
forever."

"I don't know.  I never really thought about it."

She wasn't wearing any makeup and she had this tiny chip in her front
tooth that was a few shades too white, giving her a healthy, genuine
quality that the Barbie doll southern girls I'd dated in the past would
have been horrified by.  I watched her hair, free again today, blow
around in a hair-spray-less frenzy as she leaned a little farther out
the window.

I smiled a little wider, unable to help myself.  Seeing her there,
framed by the old trees and flowering hedges, smelling her shampoo on
the warm air ... I felt an unfamiliar, but not unpleasant, sensation in
my stomach accompanied by the sudden realization that I loved her.  Was
that a noble sentiment?  Pathetic?  Stupid?  All of the above?

In the end, the moment was too perfect to analyze, so I just kept
grinning.

Anne finally ducked back through the window and began extracting hair
from her mouth and eyes, trying unsuccessfully to put some order to it.
"What are you so happy about?  I thought you said you hated these
things."

I shrugged.  "The sun is shining, the birds are singing .. ."

"And all this will be yours someday."

My smile faded and the breath slowly went out of me.

To be perfectly honest, her analysis was more or less correct.  In
fact, my father didn't really even own this property it was held in the
family trust.  When he died, I would become the primary beneficiary
(assuming I was still in the employ of the industry) and would get use
of it until I passed it on to the children it seemed I would never
have.

We came around a sweeping bend, and a long lines of cars parked on the
sides of the road became visible.  I sped up a little, suddenly anxious
to get Anne to the party.  A few hours with the Barnetts was enough to
convince just about anyone that my life wasn't as charmed as it
appeared.

How's IT GOING, Jimmy?  I haven't seen you forever.  What've you been
up to?"  I said, stepping out of the car and handing him the keys.
"Just parkin' cars, man."

I'd known him even longer than I'd known Darius.  When we were kids, we
used to smoke stolen cigarettes out behind the guest house until my
father found out and didn't care.

"Jimmy, this is Anne," I said.

"Hey.  Good to meet you."  Her smile and handshake had an easygoing
friendliness to them that I hadn't seen in a long time.

"Jimmy's dad is the caretaker here.  We've been friends since we were
kids," I said, conscious of the fact that I was showing off proving
that despite my position as murderer of millions, I had old friends
just like normal people.

"Cool."  She glanced up the road toward my dad's seascape of a lawn.
"This way?"

Jimmy nodded and she started off up the road, looking a little unsteady
in shoes that I guessed were borrowed, too.

"Cute chick," Jimmy said.  "Seems nice."

"She hates me," I said.

He appraised me in a kind of disinterested way and then slipped behind
the wheel of my car.  "What's to hate?"

It was ANOTHER wonderfully executed party.  In my limited experience,
the weather always seemed to cooperate for these things, and today was
no exception: The breeze that flowed across the property wasn't as hot
and wet as normal, and it was gusting just gently enough to not disturb
napkins and hats.  The lawn was dotted with open-sided tents shading
teak furniture and women whose plastic surgeons had cautioned them to
keep out of direct sunlight.  Flower arrangements were everywhere
hanging from low-lying branches, in trellises that had been installed
just for the party, and in terra-cotta pots so large that they must
have been brought in by crane.

The crowd of a hundred or so people was pleasantly spread out,
collected in conversational knots of three or four except where they'd
bunched up at the food tables.  Most were holding lit cigarettes, but
only half were actually puffing on them.  The smoke was just thick
enough to keep the bugs away.

I spotted Anne just ahead, weaving slowly through the guests with her
hands clasped behind her back, examining each face with the intensity
of someone studying paintings in a museum.  I adjusted my trajectory to
intercept her, trying to ignore the attention my presence was getting.
I'd almost caught her when my father appeared from one of the tents.

"Trevor!"  he said, walking purposefully toward me, hand outstretched.
His voice was a little too loud and his manner a little too gregarious,
as though he were an actor in a theater with bad acoustics.

"I'm so glad you could make it."

My grand ad had taken a certain amount of pleasure in referring to my
father as the "runt of the litter."  Not a terribly flattering
description but fairly accurate, I suppose.  Dad was a soft,
five-foot-ten man with dark, thinning hair in a family of Vikings. Even
at seventy-four when he'd died (staph infection, not cancer), Grandad
was an inch taller than me.  My two uncles had both been even taller,
but both had died young (car and hunting accidents).

Grandad had been absolutely devastated by the loss of his big,
good-looking boys.  My father, with his competition gone, had tried to
step in and be the devoted son but it hadn't worked.  No matter how
much he tried to help, no matter how good his grades, no matter how
meteoric his rise at Terra, Grandad couldn't put the deaths of his
blond football stars behind him.

"How's work treating you, Trevor?  I guess we're keeping you pretty
busy."

"Pretty busy," I said, trying to match the volume of his voice for some
reason.  "But not as busy as you, I guess."

It went on like that for about three minutes a fairly long time to
avoid awkward silences and still manage not to really say anything.
Over his shoulder I could see Anne watching us with the same detachment
she had the other guests.  My father suddenly cut short what could only
be called our verbal exchange, slapped me on the back, told me to get
some thing to drink, spun, and disappeared.  A fairly obvious clue as
to what was coming next.

"Honey!"

I turned slowly, smiling and bobbing my head.  "Hi, Mom."

"What are you doing here, sweetie?  I'm so happy to see you."

She blinked her wet eyes-and gave me a loose hug, keeping her head
pulled back far enough that there was no danger of smearing her
liberally applied makeup.  She released me after a few seconds, and I
led her over to where Anne was standing.

"Mom, I'd like to introduce you to Anne."

They shook hands silently, my mother looking a bit perplexed.  She was
undoubtedly thinking that with a little hair color, a perm, a
Wonderbra, and a fluffier dress, Anne would be almost presentable.

"It's so good to see you again," Mom said to her and then turned back
to me.  "Now, don't ya'll leave until we've had a chance to chat."

And then she was gone.

"I don't remember ever meeting your mother before," Anne said when Mom
had retreated out of earshot.

I quoted a T-shirt Darius had printed a few years back to commemorate a
party that featured two pounds of top-notch psychedelic mushrooms. "You
weren't there, but I saw you anyway."

She opened her mouth to say something, but I cut her off.

"Don't you think we need a drink?  I think we need a drink."

"Okay."

The other guests seemed less confused by my presence now, and I got
smiles and nods as we worked our way toward a table covered with liquor
bottles.  The man standing behind it was black, as were the people
whisking empty dishes and glasses from the tables, offering hors
d'oeuvres from silver trays, and adjusting umbrellas to provide just
the right angle of shade.  My father would tell you that he liked to do
his part for affirmative action, but I suspected that it just reminded
him of a time he wished he'd been born into.

"Beer, please," I said.  "Anne?"

"That's fine."

The tops were just being popped off when I felt a powerful hand clamp
down on my shoulder.

"I saw you on TV.  You should have walked up and smacked that prima
donna."

"Anne, have you ever met Congressman Sweeny?"

"I don't think I have."

"What do you think, Anne?"  Sweeny said as they shook hands.  "Should
he have decked oP Scalia right there on the courtroom steps?"

Anne didn't answer, instead concentrating on Sweeny as he pulled a
cigarette from his pocket and put it between his lips.  She finally
spoke up when a gold lighter appeared in his hand.

"Would you mind not smoking?"

He grinned around the cigarette and his hand rose to his face, but then
he realized that she might not be joking.  He hesitated for a moment
and then excused himself.

Anne looked over at me, arms crossed in front of her, waiting to be
scolded.

"There's always shrimp at these things," I said.  "Have you seen
any?"

We spent the next half hour making the rounds and exchanging
pleasantries with various friends of the family, southern politicians,
and tobacco industry dignitaries.  Occasionally, I'd take part in some
"tsk-tsking" about the Montana suit and entertain some pontificating
about the anti-tobacco lobby, but Anne pretty much kept quiet.  I
wasn't sure if she was feeling guilty about Congressman Sweeny (a
card-carrying scumbag who had undoubtedly been trying to figure out how
he could lure her into a broom closet for a quickie), whether she was
playing the role of quiet spy, or whether she was just trying to be on
good behavior in front of a Smokeless Youth board member.

I noticed her drumming her fingers neurotically on one of her
still-fascinating thighs while we were talking to a particularly
militant pro tobacco senator and decided the latter was probably true.
An opportunity to test that theory presented itself a few minutes
later.

"Have you met Dr.  Jacobs?"  I asked, grabbing her by the arm and
dragging her toward a man with gray hair and narrow, stooped shoulders.
He was standing alone in the middle of the party and appeared to be
having a quiet conversation with- himself.

"Dr.  Jacobs?  How are you doing, sir?  I'd like you to meet Anne."

He took a step back instead of offering his hand.  It was nothing
personal he'd been doing that for as long as I'd known him.

"Carl Jacobs?"  Anne said, her voice straining a bit as she trLd to
keep herself in check.

"That's right," I said.  "Dr.  Jacobs here is the head of Terracorp's
Science Department.  He's been studying tobacco for ... well, for
longer than you and I have been alive."

Truth be told, I was being a real asshole here.  Carl Jacobs was a
super-nice guy who was terrified of nearly everything particularly
people.

"So, Doctor," Anne said, "what is it exactly you study?"

"Tobacco," he said nervously.

"Specifically, what's something you might be involved in?"

"Flavor."

"Flavor, really?"  I could hear it in her voice she was going to crack
in about thirty seconds.  It turned out that I didn't have to wait that
long.

"Strange.  I could swear that you're the man who discovered that
putting ammonia in cigarettes gives smokers a bigger nicotine jolt and
addicts them faster."

Jacobs took another step backward, trying to hide behind the drink in
his hand.  "Not me!  I mean, I don't think there is any conclusive
evidence of that."

"You know," Anne continued, "I read when they recalled Perrier because
of poisonous levels of benzene, the actual amount in each bottle was
one two-thousandths of what you'd get from a single cigarette.  Is that
true?"

I put my hand on Anne's back and she jerked her head around toward me,
assuming I was coming to Jacobs's rescue.

"I still want to find out where those shrimp have gotten off to.  Would
you guys excuse me?"

I avoided Jacobs's eye and wandered away, making a mental note to
wallow in guilt about it later.

After getting a club soda and a few more snacks, I avoided wading back
into the crowd, instead skirting the edges of it and finding a shady
spot beneath a tree.  In the distance, I could see that Jacobs had
managed to light a cigarette but that it didn't seem to be deterring
Anne any.  Finally, he made a break for it, cutting a swath through the
well-dressed crowd while she relentlessly pursued.

The club soda was cold, and the shade and temporary solitude felt good.
I'd grown up with these people, I worked with them, I had the same
history as them, but I didn't feel any connection.  It's strange not to
have anywhere you belong.

I walked along a truly beautiful hibiscus hedge, finally stopping to
watch a hummingbird dipping its beak into a particularly vibrant
blossom.

"Pretty, aren't they?"

I spun around, but no one was there.  I walked a little farther, and a
bench that had been hidden by the hedge began to appear.  Sitting on it
was Paul Trainer.

"They are," I said, feeling the groundless calm that stemmed from being
here with Anne suddenly abandon me.

He tilted his waxy-looking face toward the sun and closed his eyes.  As
near as I could tell, he was the only person at the party wearing a
suit dark gray despite the heat, with a jacket so long that you'd have
to go back to the eighteen hundreds to find a time when it was in
fashion.

"You were right, you know," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"About what your generation feels when they smoke.  Information sets
when you're young.  When I was a kid, the danger was played down and
cigarette advertising was everywhere.  Even after everything that's
happened, it's hard for me to believe they're bad for me ..."

I nodded, but decided that the less I said the better off I'd be.

"When you close your eyes all you see is the warning labels and the
public-health studies.  You were too young to remember when the
Marlboro Man could move and ride and smoke.  In a way, I feel sorry for
your generation.  Information sometimes comes at the price of
romance."

"People are more health conscious now," I said, already forgetting to
keep my mouth shut.

He laughed.  "Your generation worships at the altar of safety, doesn't
it?  "Have a safe holiday."  "Drive safe."  No one just wants to have
fun anymore."

"I guess not."

The hummingbird was gone now and with it my reason for standing there,
so I turned to leave.

"Why'd you pick history, Trevor?"

I stopped, not sure how to take the fact that Paul Trainer had bothered
to find out my college major.

"The study of the past seems so ... dead to me," he said.  "Like
studying shadows.  This happened, that happened ..."

The truth wasn't very impressive.  When I'd arrived at college, I'd
been typically unsure of what to do and I'd had a really good history
teacher my first semester.  It turned out to be the right decision,
though.  I really enjoyed it.

"It's not what happened so much as who it happened to, Mr.  Trainer.
It's the study of human nature.  It's finding what was behind those
dates and events that's interesting."

"What's behind the tobacco industry's dates and events?"

I shrugged.  "America was founded on tobacco exports.  World wars were
fought on adrenaline and nicotine.  The development of our political
and economic systems was molded by tobacco money ..."

"Did you know that the military used to put cigarettes in C rations?"
he said, eyes still closed, face still thrust toward the sun.

"I didn't."

He smiled.  "Yes, you did."

In my peripheral vision, I saw Anne bearing down on Congressman
Sweeny.

"Historical characters tend to become caricatures over time, don't you
think, Trevor?  Either very good or very evil."

I nodded, suspecting that he was spying on me from behind those old
eyelids.

"You went to Duke, right?"

"Only for a little while, Mr.  Trainer.  I did part of a master's
there."

"But you didn't finish."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I got kicked out."

"And how did you manage that?"

"The real reason or what they said?"

"The real reason.  I know what they said."

"My master's thesis... well, it involved doing DNA tests on
African-Americans who could trace their ancestry back to slaves working
for wealthy southern families.  I was interested in finding out how
much Caucasian blood was mixed in."

He laughed the first time I'd ever seen him do it.  Honestly, it was
kind of a frightening little ritual: His chapped lips curled back,
revealing large, tobacco-stained teeth, then a loud, monosyllabic
bark.

"What did they say when they found out what you were planning?"

"They said they didn't feel it, uh, meaningfully added to the
information base."

"I would have given anything to read it," he said through the violent
coughing fit his laugh had triggered.  "But it couldn't possibly have
been as brilliant as your memo on hiring Pamela Anderson as our primary
spokesman."

"You .. . you read that?"

"Read it?  Hell, it's still hanging above my desk at home."

I wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"And what about us, Trevor?  What's our place in history?"

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, either.

"Something wrong, son?"

"I'm not sure I'm qualified to lecture you about the tobacco
industry."

"This is a party, for Christ's sake!  We're having a pleasant
conversation.  People do that at parties-."

"I'm not sure I have anything to say that would be worth your time."

"Look out there," he said, pointing to the people covering my dad's
lawn.  "Exactly three-quarters of those people want to kiss my ass, and
the other quarter wants me to kiss theirs.  I'm not in the mood for
either co day  Anything I do that doesn't involve them is worth my
time."

I figured I'd more or less made my bed at this point and anyone I
hadn't pissed off yet, Anne was probably taking care of.

"I think the tobacco industry is a victim of its history, Mr.  Trainer.
For a hundred years we've terrorized the federal and state governments
paralyzed them with fear.  And for a long time that worked for us.  But
now with the rise of litigation ... Well, that paralysis is coming back
to bite us."

"You make it sound so ... nefarious."

"Smooth denials aside, we kill nearly half a million people a year."

It was a brave statement, and I was glad I'd made it.  It went a little
ways toward reversing the Video Game Debacle, as it would henceforth be
known.

"That's not entirely true, Trevor.  We provide a product that allegedly
allows nearly half a million people a year to kill themselves."

"Don't say that too loud or people will start going after us under the
assisted-suicide laws."

"So, in your opinion, Congress and the president are just going to sit
back and watch the courts tear us apart."

I shrugged.  "The world has changed, and we haven't changed with it.
We've gotten into the business of putting out fires..."

It suddenly occurred to me that I was maybe going too far.  Trainer him
self had directed that losing strategy for the last twenty years.  I
was trying to figure out a way to backpedal when Anne miraculously
appeared.

"Trevor ..."

"Anne, let me introduce you to Paul Trainer."

He jumped to his feet and took her hand, bowing a little as he shook
it.  "It's very nice to meet you, miss."

"You, too," she said, but something was obviously wrong.  She seemed
barely interested.

"Could you excuse us for a moment, Mr.  Trainer?"

"Of course."

She pulled me along the hibiscus until we were out of earshot.

"Trevor ... there's a problem with your mother."

"Really?"

She gave a furtive little motion with her head and I looked out over
the crowd, instantly spotting the problem she was talking about.  Mom's
face was blurred with the hair that had fallen across it and her joints
seemed to have loosened.  I turned back to Anne, not needing to watch
any longer.  I'd already seen it.

"Maybe we should take her inside," Anne suggested.

I'd been trying to do that since I was thirteen.  She'd hug me and make
a loud speech about how I was always looking out for her, while
everyone watched with those superior little smiles.  Then she'd ask me
to get her another drink.

"She'll be fine."

Anne seemed a little angry at my apathy and opened her mouth to yell at
me but then didn't.

I heard footsteps on the grass behind me and turned to see my father
and Paul Trainer approaching.

"I'm real sorry to interrupt," Trainer said to Anne.  "But we've got a
Montana update coming in over the videophone, and I was wondering if I
could steal Trevor for a little while."

She offered a strained but polite smile.

My father, who clearly wasn't very happy, tapped his watch.  "Now,
Trevor."

Trainer put a hand on his shoulder.  "We can wait a few minutes, can't
we, Edwin?  Say, five minutes, Trevor?"

I nodded dumbly as Trainer took my father by the arm and led him
away.

"I'm getting the impression that you haven't been entirely truthful
about your role at Terra," Anne said.

I only half heard her as I concentrated on the crowd parting to let my
father and Trainer through.

"Trevor?"

"I honestly don't understand what's going on, Anne.  I'd swear that I
just spent the last half hour insulting the man ..."

"I got everyone else."

I felt a smile spread across my face.  "Thanks.  And thanks for coming
it really helped."  I handed her my keys.  "You'll be happy to know
that your work here is done.  Get Jimmy to pull my car up for you.  I
don't know when I'm going to be able to get out of here."

"Do I have to leave?"

"No.  Leave whenever you want."

"Then I'm going to stay a little longer."

And wait for me, I wondered?

"There are still a few people I want to talk to."

She started back toward the party without so much as a backward
glance.

Fifteen.

Monday morning when I walked through the office, everything went
silent.  People disappeared behind the chest-high walls of their cubes,
ducked through doors, and hustled off toward the copy room.  You'd
think I would have found all this desperate scurrying interesting but
honestly, it just made me tired.  It was becoming harder and harder to
maintain the illusion that I'd ever had the trust and friendship of the
people I worked with and that they didn't just see me as a mildly
dangerous curiosity.  A dancing bear.

The meeting I'd been called into during my father's party had provided
me with yet another hour of intense discomfort.  Daniel Alexander had
come off a little less smug and bored than when I'd met with him, and
that sarcastic sense of humor my father had gone on about was nowhere
in evidence.

The meeting did accomplish one thing, though: It gave some credence to
Trainer's rather implausible story as to why he would send someone like
me to check up on our Montana legal team.  Alexander's report seemed to
be less focused on the trial than it was on the reasons why his
five-hundred-dollar-an-hour involvement was critical.  I guess he was
worried that someone in management might figure out that they could
hire a forty-dollar-an-hour ambulance chaser to lose for us.

I'd spent the entire meeting sitting quietly in a corner, trying to
ignore the looks of the other men in the room as they tried to figure
out what I

was doing there.  Fading into the background had always been one of my
greatest talents, but now I seemed to be failing even at that.

I sympathized with those men, though, because I wanted to know what I
was doing there, too.  Was it Trainer's goal to humiliate me to subject
me to people who reminded me that I was a know-nothing nobody?  If so,
it was working rOn the other hand, maybe this was his idea of a reward
for entertaining him in the garden.

Anne had been gone by the time I emerged from the house, so I took a
position by the shrimp bowl and tried to watch Trainer without being
too obvious.  I couldn't quite figure him out.  Was he more cheerful
since our doom-and-gloom meeting or was it just that the party had
become more subdued around him?

When the cab Jimmy had rounded up for me dropped me at home, I'd found
my car in the driveway and my keys in the post slot.  There had been no
note from Anne thanking me for a lovely time, no message on my machine
from her implying that I wasn't such a bad guy after all, and no
invitation to a quiet little dinner Sunday night.

There was, however, a photo of a naked girl diving into a star-shaped
pool tacked to my door with an arrow.  The note on the back, this time
in the shaky scrawl of the man himself, said simply: "Silly boy."  I
hoped this little communique had appeared after Anne had been there,
but the way my luck was running, it seemed kind of unlikely.

"Anything going on?"  I asked Ms.  Davenport who, to her credit,
managed not to flee at the sight of me.

"This just came in."  She handed me a printed e-mail, and I read
through it twice.  "Is this a joke?"

"No.  The documents you're supposed to deliver are on your desk.  Paul
Trainer's assistant brought them down personally."

I AIMED MY CAR at an empty parking space and jumped out, hurrying
across asphalt to a small, white office building.  Because of all the
dopey secrecy surrounding my involvement in Smokeless Youth, I'd never
been to their headquarters and was forced to hunt around a little
before I found a door stenciled with the letters SY.

The front room had the feel of a dentist's office waiting room, but
without the five-year-old copies of Woodworking and Black Entrepreneur.
A woman sitting behind an open window frame eyed me suspiciously,
undoubtedly certain that I was some tobacco company mercenary sent to
shoot up the place.

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah, I'm looking for Anne Kimball.  Is she in?"

"Can I tell her who's here?"

"Trevor Barnett."

The surprise on her face suggested that she recognized my name, and I
decided to use that to my advantage.  A quick, surprise assault was
probably best, as it wouldn't give Anne a chance to jump out a
window.

"Don't bother," I said in as friendly a tone as I could muster and
headed for a door that I assumed led into the bowels of America's teen
antismoking effort.  "I'll just head on back."

I glanced into each office as I moved along the poster-lined hallway,
finally finding Anne sitting at her desk in the last one.  I entered
quietly and rose up on my tiptoes to get a better angle on what she was
scowling at.  It turned out to be a concept for SY's ill-advised "five
million kids smoke" campaign.

"Hi, Anne."

Her head rose slowly, as though she was hoping the voice had just been
a figment of her imagination.

"Trevor.  What are you doing here?"

"I was wondering if I could borrow you for a little while?"

"Borrow me?  What do you mean?  What for?"

"I've got an errand to do for Paul Trainer, and I think you might find
it interesting."

"Uh, thanks for the offer, but I'm swamped.  We've got this thing "

"I talked to John on the way over.  He agreed that you should take a
break and come with me."

She seemed a little angry obviously not happy about me and John O'Byrne
planning her day behind her back.

"Look, Trevor .. ."  She pointed to the door behind me, and I closed
it.  "I don't want to give you the impression that I dislike you.
That's not the case.  I mean, what's to dislike?"

It occurred to me that Jimmy had said almost exactly the same thing to
me yesterday, and for some reason that bothered me.

"But, I don't think we're really on the same wavelength.  I mean, I
appreciate you taking me to the party and all it was really
educational.  But..."

"This is pure business, Anne.  I swear.  And I think you'll enjoy it.
In fact, I guarantee it.  Come on, it's one day.  I may not be the
greatest company in the world, but if you grit your teeth, I know you
can stand one lousy day."

Once again, I found myself in ambiguous territory.  Was this assignment
a reward or a setup?  It seemed unlikely that Anne's rampage through
the party would have escaped Paul Trainer's notice, and he would be
rightfully angry.  It seemed to me that I should have been fired by now
or, at the very least, damned to a job well beneath upper-management's
radar.  Obviously, though, ulterior motives and hidden agendas abounded
and I was caught somewhere in between them.

Anne was sitting directly across from me, arms crossed tightly in front
of her chest and lips irretrievably sealed.  Yesterday, she'd been
fairly successful at feigning discomfort in the deep leather seats of
my Lincoln Navigator, but she was having a hard time maintaining that
pretense as she languished in the overstuffed loungers of Paul
Trainer's jet.  Oh, she tried: She fidgeted back and forth, peered out
the window, flipped impatiently through magazines.  But there was no
escaping the fact that this was the only way to travel.

"Where are we going?"  she said finally.

"I can't tell you.  It's a surprise."

Long silence.

"How's your mom ?"

"I'm sure she's fine.  Thanks for asking."

Another long silence that I couldn't figure out how to fill.

Finally, she waved a hand around the jet.  "You keep telling us you're
just a paper pusher.  Is this a family perk?"

"I thought that after the party you'd realize there are no family
perks."

"A lot of people have sticky relationships with their parents, Trevor.
But not everyone inherits a gazillion dollars."

I laughed.  "If I tell you something, will you promise to keep it to
yourself?"

She thought about it long enough that I figured I could trust her.
"Okay."

"My grandfather put a bunch of tobacco stock in a trust for me when I
was born.  As long as I continue to work for Terra, I get a fairly
small annual distribution based on dividends and capital gains."

She thought about that for a moment.  "But there aren't any capital
gains or dividends.  There haven't been since ..."

"Not since I gave SY that big check," I said, completing her sentence.
"The silver spoon in my mouth isn't as big and shiny as everyone thinks
it is."

"Why do you stay, then?  Why not go get a better job?"

A fair question.

"Well, the other provision of my trust is that it gets distributed to
me when I'm sixty."

"That's a long time away," she said, pointing to the pack of cigarettes
in my pocket.

I shrugged.  "I know it's probably hard for you to understand, but this
has been my life for as long as I can remember: Go to work for the
company, get payments, be rich at sixty.  It's not that easy to walk
away from.  It should be, but it's not."

She looked a little skeptical.  "Are a few payments that you're not
even getting anymore and the remote possibility that you might get some
cash before you die worth all this moral discomfort?  I've got to
wonder."

"What discomfort?"  I said a little too quickly.

"Get real, Trevor.  If you're so happy with your lot in life, why are
you involved with SY?"

"Whether or not I shuffk papers and collect my money doesn't make any
difference as to who starts smoking and who dies," I said, clumsily
avoiding the question.

"Fine.  Whatever."

Long silence number three.

"I once tried to get transferred to Terra's food subsidiary," I
admitted finally.

"What happened?"

"The trust administrators wouldn't go for it.  Besides, I'm not all
that sure it would have solved my problem.  When we got turned down, my
lawyer sent me an article from Newsweel{ about everybody in America
killing themselves with junk food.  I must have read it a hundred
times.  Turns out that if you work at it hard enough, you can snap your
neck with a feather pillow."

"How can you even compare cigarettes and junk food, Trevor?  Tobacco
provides no benefit to anyone, and the industry has been knowingly
killing people for years for the sake of nothing more than money.  It's
a sinister industry.  Downright Orwellian."

"I don't know," I said, too shocked by the fact that we were having a
conversation to be properly afraid of where it might lead.  "If
anything's Orwellian about it, it's people's ability to doublethink.  I
mean, despite all the information out there about how dangerous smoking
is, people still manage to close their eyes and do it."

"Because your company spends billions to obscure that information."

"Come on, Anne.  That dog just don't bite anymore.  There have been
warnings on the packs for longer than we've been alive.  You can try
all you want, but you're not going to convince me that people don't
know smoking is bad for them."

She shook her head in a combination of wonder and disbelief.  Then she
started clapping.  "You may be the most brilliant rationalizer I've
ever met."

"I don't think that's fair.  I "

"Of course it's fair, Trevor!  People lie to themselves they always
have.  It's human nature.  "If I buy this shampoo or this Bowflex, I'll
look just like the model.  If I drive this car, or wear this cologne,
women will fall all over me ..."" She pointed at me.  ""I'm just a
lowly file clerk, I'm not responsible."  You take advantage and you
know it."

There's nothing like arguing with someone who's right to make you say
stupid things you don't mean.

"I guess there's a sucker born every minute."

Anne sank a little farther into her seat.  "Try all you want, Trevor,
but you don't play the hard-ass convincingly.  You like P. T. Barnum?
Me, too.  Do you know what else he said?"

I just sat there.

"He said, "Money is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.""

Not a moment too soon, the copilot appeared in the cockpit door and
started walking toward us with a cell phone held out in front of him.

"Mr.  Barnett?  I'm afraid we're being diverted to L.A."

"What?  What do you mean we're being div "

He proffered the phone and I snatched it from his hand.  "Hello?"

"Trevor!  Sorry to spring this on you, boy."  Paul Trainer's voice.

"I don't understand.  We're not going to see ..."  I glanced up at Anne
and cut myself off.

"Damn, son ... I know how much you kids like those rock and rollers,
but we got an emergency on the West Coast and I need you to handle it
for me."

"An emergency?  What kind of emergency?"

"What?  I can hardly hear a thing you're saying.  These goddamn cell
phones!  I swear the world would be better off if we all used a couple
of Dixie cups and a real long string."

"I said, what kind of "

The line went dead, and I reluctantly handed the phone back.

"Things aren't going as planned?"  Anne said as the copilot wandered
back to the cockpit.

"No."

I flopped back in my seat and began chewing my thumbnail.

"So we're not going where you thought we were going?"

"Uh uh," I said dejectedly.

"Then there's no harm in telling me where that was.  Right?"

I sighed quietly, digging a sealed manila envelope out of my briefcase
and holding it up.  "Paul Trainer asked me to deliver some papers to
Ian Kingwell.  I know he's your favorite singer, and I thought you
might think it was fun to meet him."

I didn't really expect a display reminiscent of the Beatles' first
landing on American soil, but I did expect some reaction to my
statement.  Instead she just sat there with her brow slightly crinkled.
Finally, "What kind of papers?"

"I dunno.  I guess Terra's food division is sponsoring his concert
series.  Something about that."

"The food division," she said.  "Didn't we just establish that you
don't work for the food division?"

I shrugged, and she snatched the envelope from my hand.

"Hey!"  I said as she leaped from her seat and ran to the rear of the
plane, tearing at the envelope as she went.

"Stop that!"  I yelled, chasing her.  "You can't open those.  They're
confidential!"

She crammed herself into a corner with her back to me, and I tried
unsuccessfully to reach around and retrieve the pages that she was now
skimming.

"Blah, blah, blah," she said, and then tossed a page casually onto the
floor.  I fell to my knees and scooped it up.

"Anne!"

"Blah, blah, blah ..."  Another page jettisoned.  Then "Wait... Now,
you might find this interesting.  It says here that in addition to
prominently displaying company logos, Ian is supposed to use company
products of his choice on television and in photographs."  She turned
and looked down at me.  "What products do you figure those would be,
Trevor?  You think maybe he'll pause during an interview for a
vitamin-rich helping of instant Mac and Cheese?"

"I don't know!"  I protested.

But of course I did.  While I'd been careful not to look at the
documents or give their contents any conscious thought, Terra's goal
here wasn't all that complicated.  Ian Kingwell was a balls-to-the-wall
chain-smoker who for some reason almost never indulged his habit
publicly.  The death of Kurt Cobain (suicide) and the rise of the
oh-so-nonsmoking Britney Spears crowd had left the industry in
desperate need of good, old-fashioned, rock-and-roll puffers.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Anne said, flicking the rest of
the pages at me in such a way that they scattered all over the floor.
"That's not just a bunch of ink, Trevor.  Those papers are going to
kill people.  And I'll bet you know just how many, don't you?  I'll bet
your accountants came up with a number so they'd know how much to
spend."

"We don't "

"You don't?"  she said, cutting me off.  "Well then why don't you and I
try to come up with a number on our own?  Doesn't that sound like
fun?"

"Not rca "

"Let's see.  You figure twenty million kids see Ian with a cigarette on
TV.  We'll be really conservative and say one in ten thousand decides
to take up smoking because of it.  That's what?  Two thousand kids?
I'll be generous and say that half quit and only twenty percent die
from the habit.  So ..."  She tapped her front tooth with the nail of
her index finger, and I couldn't help wondering if that's where the
chip came from.

"Congratulations.  That's two hundred people.  Not a bad day's work
..."

"Jesus Christ, Anne!  I didn't negotiate the deal!"  I shouted.  "His
manager and Terra hashed this thing out months ago.  And now I'm not
even going to deliver the documents!  I have nothing to do with
this."

"Of course, I'm being insensitive.  It's not your fault.  You never
actually do anything, do you?  Other than stand around and pretend you
don't exist."

I rose to my feet, and she jabbed me in the chest.  "Do you know that
when I met you, I thought there was something in there?  I mean, sure,
you were completely lost but at least you seemed like you were trying
to find your way.  I figured that was more than can be said for most
people.  You really had me fooled."

Sixteen.

"Look," I said, making a show of leaning over the seats and glaring at
the side of our driver's face.  "Seriously.  We want to know where
you're taking us."

He returned a vapid smile but kept his eyes dutifully on the road. "I'm
sure they'll explain everything when we get there."

"Who's 'they' and where's 'there'?"  Anne demanded.

"I really can't say, ma'am."

"You can't or you won't?"

"Anne, this really isn't that big a " I made the mistake of putting a
hand on her shoulder, and she picked it up and tossed it away as if it
were a dead rat.

Her frustration wasn't hard to understand.  I'd had a lifetime to grow
accustomed to the tobacco industry's obsession with secrecy: "I have no
idea what you're talking about.  You can't prove a thing.  There are
conflicting studies ..."  Ambiguity and feigned ignorance were our
sword and shield.  Her problem was that she was trying to process what
was happening using logic.  In my experience, this approach was almost
always doomed to failure.

She peered through the window as the driver swung the car into a
well-kept industrial park and then skidded to a halt in front of a
windowless building with fox news stenciled on the door.

It seemed like I was supposed to get out, so I did.  Anne followed,
albeit reluctantly.

"Mr.  Barnett!"

A woman wearing an absolutely Puritan business suit, complete with tall
white collar and a brooch burst from the building, grabbed my arm, and
began physically pulling me along behind her.  I glanced back and
confirmed that Anne was keeping up.

"It's wonderful to meet you.  Really, a privilege.  I'm sorry that we
don't have time for makeup "

"Makeup?"

"Don't worry!  You look great!  We were hoping you'd have a tailwind,
but sometimes things don't work out, you know?  But it's fantastic that
you're here.  Fantastic.  Having a completely unanswered interview like
this would have been horrible.  A disaster.  Particularly now.  But
then, I don't suppose I have to tell you that."

I managed to get a hand out and keep a set of double doors from
swinging back and hitting me in the face as I was dragged through them.
The section of the building that we entered was cavernous and
unfinished-looking temporary walls, cables, and metal spotlights
anchored to a concrete floor.  I'd never been in a TV studio before and
while it was kind of exciting, I couldn't shake the feeling that this
was a bad thing.  I finally stopped short, causing the Puritan lady's
arm to slip from mine as her considerable momentum carried her forward.
Anne ran into the back of me.

"Why am I here?"  I said.  "And who are you?"

She gave an exasperated shake of her head.  "You haven't been briefed?
I'm so sorry.  I'm Cynthia Bates I work in Terra's L.A.
public-relations office.  We got a last-minute call telling us that Fox
was interviewing Angus Scalia you know how the press like to nail us at
the very last possible moment and they asked us if we wanted to provide
an industry spokesman to be on the show with him."  She gave my arm
another tug, but I didn't move.  "And none of our local people were
available.  Good thing you were close by."

"I wasn't close by."

She gave me one of those "You're telling me more than I want to know"
shrugs and moved behind me to see if she could break my inertia by
pushing instead of pulling.

"Uh, I think there's been a mistake, here.  Cynthia, is it?  You see,
I'm a file clerk, not an industry spokesman.  I've haven't been on TV
since my Little League team won the state championships."

"You're Trevor Barnett, aren't you?"

"Yes, but "

"It's my understanding that Paul Trainer called personally to notify
our office that you were being sent here to give the industry's side of
the story."

"I don't really know what the industry's side of the story is.  I think
maybe Mr.  Trainer made a mistake."

She actually gasped at my blasphemy, which would undoubtedly be
reported in triplicate before the day was over.

"The show's airing in just a few minutes, Mr.  Barnett.  We have to
hurry."

"I don't think you understand.  I don't want to be on TV.  You go.
You're in public relations.  Isn't this the kind of thing you do for a
living?"

Cynthia blinked a few times before she spoke, enunciating clearly and
slowly.  "Mr.  Trainer requested that you do this personally."

"No."

I felt Anne's hand on my shoulder, and she leaned around me with a less
than reassuring smile on her face.  "What Mr.  Barnett means to say is
that he's very excited about the prospect of appearing before millions
of viewers and explaining his position on the tobacco industry."  She
added her weight to Cynthia's, and I found myself being propelled
inevitably forward.

"Okay, Mr.  Barnett," a girl who looked fresh out of college said as
she shoved me backward into a chair and crammed an earpiece into my
appropriate orifice.  "The format here is pretty informal.  Mr.  Flag"
the host, who I'd watched tear apart everyone from Enron executives to
environmentalists trying to save baby seals "will ask both you and Mr.
Scalia questions, and you should answer them as clearly and concisely
as you can.  Try to avoid talking over each other no one will be able
to understand you."

I looked around, but all I could see was lights and cameras.  "Where is
he?"

"Who?  Mr.  Scalia?  He's on a remote feed from Miami.  You won't be
able to see him, but you'll be able to hear him."

"Can I get some powder out here?"  she shouted and then leaned over me
to make sure I was connected to everything.  I breathed in, hoping to
find the comforting tobacco scent of a potential ally but could only
smell shampoo.

There was a brief moment of idleness, and what was about to happen here
suddenly came fully to roost.

"You know, I don't think this is such a good idea," I said, trying to
stand.

"You're hooked up!"  the girl protested and shoved me back again.  A
moment later another woman appeared and without warning smacked me in
the face with a big powder puff.  I squinted at her through the sudden
fog as she examined her handiwork.  "That should keep some of the shine
off.  Try to relax, okay?"  Then she disappeared past the lights.

Flag rushed in a moment later, ignoring the flurry of activity around
him as he took a seat behind his desk.  We shook hands, and he had the
good manners to try not to be obvious when he wiped my sweat off on his
slacks.

"Okay, we're coming in from commercial," a disembodied voice said.
"Three, two ..."

At first, I didn't have to say much: "I appreciate you having me," was
my relatively smooth answer to Flag thanking me for being there. Scalia
was a little more opportunistic, launching into an angry diatribe
almost immediately.

Honestly, I couldn't tell you a thing he said.  Being on TV is a lot
harder than people make it look.  All I could think to do was stare
wide-eyed into the camera, or at Flag, or at my feet.  It wasn't lost
on me that everything I

said and did was probably going to make me out to be either stupid or
guilty to the millions of people watching.  Obviously, it wasn't lost
on Anne, either.  I could see her at the edge of the set, arms crossed
and feet spread wide.  She seemed to be enjoying watching me forced out
from under my rock and into the sunlight.

"The bottom line here," Scalia said as I tried to focus and quit
thinking about Anne, "is that we are finally witnesses to the
long-overdue destruction of the tobacco industry.  The Montana suit is
an enormous step forward, but it's only the first of many.  The
cigarette pushers will finally have to pay for their crimes.  Their
assets will be seized and distributed to the families of the people
they've murdered "

Flag cut in, looking directly at me in a way that made the sweat
running down my spine go cold.  "Is that your take on the situation,
Mr.  Barnett?"

I've never watched the tape of this interview, so I can't say how long
I sat there, silently staring past Flag at Anne.  If I had to guess,
I'd say a good ten seconds which is the equivalent of about fifty hours
on TV.  As that time ticked by, Anne seemed to become less and less
firmly planted to the floor.  Then she started to look a little
concerned.  Finally, she made a motion with her hands, trying to prompt
me to say something.

But what?  The mealymouthed platitudes and legally defensible denials
that Paul Trainer and she expected me to spout?  For the first time in
my life, I couldn't rely on my uncanny talent for fading into the
background.  I actually had to do something.

"Mr.  Barnett?"

"No," I heard myself say, "that's not the way I see it."

"Of course not," Scalia replied.  "They never do, do they?  They see
everything through a filter of smoke, blood, and money."

I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but the hatred in his voice was
dead honest.  And the only way I saw to combat that kind of sincerity
was with an equal amount of it.

"If you ask me to predict the future, I'd have to say that we would
bankrupt ourselves and the plaintiffs' attorneys would settle for a
much lesser amount in order to get paid.  Then, we'd raise prices on
cigarettes and the smokers would cover the cost of the judgment."

"Mr.  Scalia," Flag said, nodding, "I have to agree with Mr.  Barnett
here.  His prediction seems fairly realistic to me."

My confidence swelled a bit at having survived the first exchange.

"Of course.  But what Mr.  Barnett isn't talking about are the four
similar suits in process.  And the twenty more that'll be filed when we
win in Montana.  And make no mistake we will win.  What are you going
to do about those, Mr.  Barnett?"

I shrugged.  "It's hard to say.  We're already paying over two hundred
billion dollars to the states more than our total profits from nineteen
fifty to the present.  I suppose that in order to keep handing out
money to smokers, we'll just have to keep increasing prices on
cigarettes.  It'll be kind of like Social Security current smokers will
pay the tab for past smokers."

Scalia didn't seem to have a set answer to that and moved off point a
bit to give himself time to think.  "Cigarettes have been a scourge on
society for hundreds of years.  It's been proven that the industry has
lied repeatedly about the dangers of smoking and that the government
has colluded with them.  Where the government is concerned, the average
citizen lost his voice years ago.  The same people are elected over and
over and are slaves to corporate special interests.  But the public can
still speak though the court system.  What Mr.  Barnett won't tell you
is that with every judgment being followed by an increase in price,
cigarettes will eventually become so expensive that no one will want to
buy them anymore.  And then the empire will crumble."

"It's a great conspiracy theory," I said.  "But it seems to me that the
government's attitude toward smoking is very much a reflection of the
public's attitude on the subject."

"I would expect Mr.  Barnett to react that way," Scalia said.  "He
comes from a long line of tobacco people going back almost to the
beginning of our country.  His family is responsible for more deaths
that the Third Reich."

Flag tried to hide a little smile.  References to Hitler always made
good television.  I, on the other hand, felt angry.  Furious, really.
Why?  I'd been called a Nazi before.

The answer came to me in another long pause that I've decided to label
as dramatic and not stupid.  The truth is, I wasn't a Nazi.  I wasn't
even good enough to be a Nazi.  I was just one of those flaccid
dumb-asses who moved into the Jews' houses and ate off their dishes,
and read the books on their shelves; all the while being very careful
not to consider where all those Jews had gotten themselves off to.

They were being killed?  they would say, stabbing at a piece of strudel
with a silver fork etched with some dead man's initials.  My goodness?
How was I to know?

Now you would think this would be a really disorienting realization a
defining moment, as they say.  You'd think that I would jump up and
proclaim the evils of tobacco or repent my sins against the hapless
creatures who shared this beautiful planet with me.  Unfortunately, I
didn't really feel any of that.  All I felt was an overwhelming sense
of disgust that went beyond just myself and grew to encompass Scalia,
the media, Paul Trainer, my father.  Pretty much everyone living or
dead.

"It seems a little hypocritical for Mr.  Scalia to call me a Nazi when
he's the one sitting here trying to dictate his values to the rest of
America to take away their freedom," I said, strangely energized by my
non epiphany

"Their freedom?  Do you mean their freedom to let you murder them?  Or
are you more concerned with your own freedom to make a product that
kills hundreds of thousands of people every year and costs this country
billions in medical expenses?"

"You know as well as I do, Mr.  Scalia, that the cost to the government
is just an accounting fantasy.  The anti tobacco lobby loves to tell
anybody who'll listen that smokers die ten years younger than
nonsmokers, but no one wants to give us credit for doing our patriotic
duty and expiring before the most unproductive and medically expensive
years of our lives.

The truth is this: Tobacco is a huge financial boon to this country.
But maybe you're right.  Maybe we should ban cigarettes take them away
from the informed adults who choose to use them.  I have to wonder if
they should be the first things on the chopping block, though.  I mean,
they're not even the most dangerous product we make."

Flag leaned forward across the desk, obviously interested in this new
twist on the normal smoking debate.  "And what is the most dangerous
product you make, Mr.  Barnett?"

"I would have to say those boxes of little doughnuts you know, the ones
with the powdered sugar on them ?"

"This is ridiculous!"  Scalia shouted.  "The fact that people like you
can make light of the horrible deaths of hundreds of thousands of
people is ... is ... sinister."

"I'm not making light of anything, Mr.  Scalia.  Are you aware that
diabetes in people in their thirties almost doubled over the last
decade, as has the incidence of obesity?  Even using the inflated death
numbers published by the anti tobacco lobby, obesity has taken over as
the number-one cause of preventable death in America.  And just as bad
are the ten to twelve thousand dollars a year in treatment that
diabetics need something you don't have with smokers.  Of course, that
doesn't include the cost of complications like amputations, blindness,
heart disease, and absenteeism.  The total cost of diabetes to America
is almost a hundred billion dollars a year the same as all cancers
combined.  And that number is nothing.  It's going to explode in the
next few years as the children who are now being victimized grow up."

"I refuse to debate " Scalia started.  But I was on a roll as I'd never
been before.  I know it sounds strange, but Scalia had come to
personify everyone who had ever put me down and every insult I'd ever
swallowed.  I cut him off again, surprising myself by looking the
show's host directly in the eye.

"Did you know that smokers are less likely to be overweight than
non-smokers?  No one ever mentions the catastrophic health problems
that smokers avoid by being thin."

I realized after I spoke that I really didn't know if it was true, but
it sounded good and it's not like people hold the tobacco industry to a
particularly high standard of integrity.

"Mr.  Flag, are we going to waste your valuable time while Mr.  Barnett
tries to divert attention from his own horrible crimes?"

"And why single out doughnuts?"  I said, ignoring him.  "Why not also
get rid of fatty foods and candy, too?  I think it's been thoroughly
proven they're far more deadly and costly than cigarettes.  And while
we're at it, I think there would be a lot less disease and reliance on
the health care system if everyone had to exercise three days per week.
We could make it a law.  Every couple of months, everyone in America
would go down to their local town hall and weigh in."  I pictured the
mound of soft flesh at the other end of my earpiece.  "If they're
overweight, we could just fine them or make them pay their own medical
costs.  There.  I've just saved the government a trillion dollars."

"You're very smooth, Mr.  Barnett.  Very clever.  But have you ever
seen a person die of lung cancer?  Watched them wither away to nothing,
choking on their own blood?  That's what you're selling.  Not only
death.  But a horrible death."

I didn't argue.  What was the point?  It was all true.

"Mr.  Barnett is obviously terrified," Scalia continued.  "He inherited
a personal fortune that my sources say is one hundred percent invested
in tobacco stocks.  He lives off the capital gains and dividends paid
to him every year.  If there are none, then he has to work like the
rest of us."

I heard the words, but didn't immediately process them.

"Mr.  Barnett?"  Flag said.  "Is that true?"

How had Scalia gotten that information?  I immediately thought of Anne
but then realized she'd been with me ever since we'd talked.

My rage and the temporary illusion of invulnerability faded and I
became reacquainted with the millions of people watching me.

"I did inherit tobacco stock," I stammered.  "But it's not much
money."

I heard Scalia laugh.  "Not much money to a tobacco industry executive.
But I think that the average American who's out there working his tail
off to put food in his kid's mouth would consider seven million dollars
to be a fair amount of cash."

My momentum had completely disappeared, and I wasn't smart enough yet
to just shut up.

"It's nowhere near that much now!  And there are no dividends or
capital gains, so "

"But if you can shirk your responsibility to your victims and increase
sales there would be, wouldn't there?  You'd be rich again."  "j__"

"Just knowing that there are people like you in the world, Mr. Barnett,
terrifies me.  Knowing that there are people who would involve
themselves in the deaths of millions of people simply to try to protect
some investment income.  Let me say to everyone out there watching this
television show: You're looking at the personification of the tobacco
industry.  Stop smoking and you may survive.  Keep smoking and Mr.
Barnett here gets a yacht."

"That's not true!"  I said, way too loudly into my microphone.

"Really, Mr.  Barnett.  Tell me why it's not true."

How could I?  How could I explain my entire life, my inheritance, my
father, my job?  How could I explain things that even I myself still
hadn't managed to reconcile in my mind?

"You know what?"  I said, yanking my earpiece out and standing.  "I
don't need this crap."

"Are YOU all right?  You don't look so great."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Anne watching me with an
expression that made me think of someone examining a mutilated animal
by the side of the road.

"I'm fine," I said, pulling a cigarette from a pack on the dashboard
and lighting it.  I didn't want to ask her to leave because I had it in
my mind that this would be the last time I'd ever see her.  I figured
I'd let the fumes do it for me.

"Why do you do that?"

"What?"

"Smoke."

"Because it's expected."

"Is that really it?  Or is it because you believe that if you kill
yourself at the same rate as everyone else, you're off the hook for all
this?"

"Please, Anne enough, okay?  I just lost my job and my trust in the
course of half an hour.  Maybe you're right and in the grand scheme of
things, the scales aren't balanced.  But today I think I'm even."

"You'll find another job.  It probably won't be as hard as you
think."

"Are you kidding?  I just got on national television and proved beyond
a shadow of a doubt that my phone number is on Satan's speed dial.  I'm
guessing that the offers aren't exactly going to be pouring in."

She opened the car door and stepped out, letting in a gush of clean,
damp air.  As I watched her walk around through the headlights I
realized that even after everything that had happened, the foremost
thing on my mind was Ian Kingwell.

On our almost completely silent flight home, I'd started thinking about
my real motivation for taking Anne to meet Kingwell.  What had I hoped
to gain?  Sure, I'd told myself that it would make her like me more.
Was that the truth or had it just been part of a subconscious plan to
demonstrate that I wasn't so bad.  To show her that even the great Ian
Kingwell was for sale?

What was I turning into?  I had my faults, but I'd never been a mean
person.  But now, after a few days of cavorting with upper management,
I'm siccing Anne on the defenseless Dr.  Jacobs and then stripping her
of her heroes.

I rolled down the window.  "Anne?"

She stopped and turned back toward me.

"I ... I'm sorry about today."

I couldn't read the expression on her face, but I could see that she
was concentrating on me harder than she ever had before.

"Were you listening to yourself today, Trevor?  When you were on with
Scalia?"

"I don't know.  Not really, I guess.  I was pretty nervous."

"That's a shame.  Because spine of what you said was worth listening
to."

Seventeen.

It was my favorite cardboard box: comfortable handles, spacious,
sturdy.  I'd emptied it of Christmas ornaments last night and was now
carrying it like a shield as I weaved through the cubicles toward my
office.  The timidity that had recently overtaken my colleagues seemed
to have dissipated a bit, and they uniformly lifted their heads and
watched me pass.

I'd hit my all-time low the night before and honestly thought I might
be on my way back up at that point.  For sure, I was scared but I
wasn't really depressed.  The people I worked with had already proven
that they'd never thought of me as anything more than an oddity, and
I'd already mourned the loss of them.  Anne seemed kind of perplexed
where I was concerned, which I took as a substantial improvement over
the disdain she'd so energetically displayed before.

Today, as they said, was the first day of the rest of my life.

I was within sight of my office door when I suddenly found my narrow
path blocked.

"Hey, Stan.  What's going on?"

"What the hell were you thinking?"  For the first time in a week he was
actually expressing an honest emotion to me.  My performance on TV and
the box in my hand must have finally cleared up any confusion about my
status at the company.

"What the hell were you thinking?"  This time he almost shouted the
words.

There was a muffled rustling behind me as people came to the doors of
their cubes to watch.

"We've got the courts breathing down our neck with a judgment that
could put us out of business and you make jokes about us killing our
customers and then suggest outlawing cigarettes?"

"Come on, Stan.  You "

"But, hey what do you care if we go down the toilet?  You've got your
seven million dollars, right?  But I don't!"  He waved his hands around
in the air.  "None of us do!  What we've got is kids to put through
school and mortgages things you wouldn't know anything about."

I stood my ground but found myself taking an increasingly defensive
posture behind my box.  The irrational panic of a person facing the end
of his familiar routine could be powerful.  I knew that as well as
anyone.

"What I said on television isn't going to make any difference to the
jury in Montana or what happens to your position here, Stan."

"You don't believe Scalia and the others can do anything to us?  I
guess you can afford to believe whatever you want."

"Maybe not as well as you think," I said, and started around him.

I was surprised when he stuck out a thick arm and blocked me.

"Tell you one thing about Scalia, though.  He calls 'em like he sees
'em.  You've been running around this office for years trying to prove
you're one of us, and in ten minutes he showed you for the spoiled
child you are."

I looked behind me at the faces of the people watching us.  They
weren't the faces of my best friends or soul mates but they were the
faces of people who'd sat in my office and BSed after hours, people
whose homes I'd been to, people whose kids' name and accomplishments I
knew.

Stan withdrew his arm and I continued to my office, feeling a little
disoriented.  Everything that was familiar to me was crumbling, and I
wasn't sure if there was going to be anything behind it.

"Good morning, Trevor."

Ms.  Davenport had her own box not quite as nice as mine, but already
filled with the contents of her desk.  I realized that I hadn't ever
considered how this would affect her.

"Ms.  Davenport, I "

As was often the case, she didn't let me finish.

"Sue Jensen in Accounting offered me a job, and I took it."

"She's a nice lady," I said, genuinely happy that Ms.  Davenport had
found a way to land on her feet.  I watched her pick up her box and
walk away.  And that was it the end of a two-year relationship.
Strangely, I've never laid eyes on that woman again.

It turned out that I didn't need my box.

When I walked into my office, it was pretty much empty.  My chair was
still there, as was my desk, but with all the drawers open and cleaned
out.  My mug, my national park calendar (this month had been
Yellowstone), my CDs, my day planner all gone.  Even my posters
espousing the health benefits of lighting up as often as humanly
possible and the patriotism of Luckys had disappeared, leaving only
slightly grayed outlines on the wall.

I sat down, trying to fight off a growing sense of embarrassment.
Everyone out there had watched Security pack up my stuff, and they were
all just sitting there waiting for me to be escorted out.  At this
point, it would probably be smarter to just slink away under my own
power.

I was almost out the door when my phone, now residing on the floor,
started to ring.  I hesitated for a moment and then picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Trevor?"

"Anne?"

"I was wondering what happened.  I tried your house, but there was no
answer.  I wasn't sure if you'd be going into work or not."

"Me neither."

"I guess everyone saw you on TV."

I looked around my empty office.  "I guess so.  I'm just waiting for
Security to come and throw me out."

There was a short silence over the line.  Finally, "How does it
feel?"

At first I thought she was being sarcastic, but her tone sounded
genuine.  I turned my back to the door and lowered my voice.

"I honestly don't know.  A little numb, I guess.  The status quo hasn't
ever been great for me, but it was familiar, you know?"

"What are you going to do now?"

"Find a job, I guess.  You guys wouldn't be hiring by any chance, would
you?"

She laughed at that.  "I don't know if I'd come around here right now
if I were you.  John's watched the video of you and Scalia about ten
times.  I think he's still trying to figure out whose side you're
on."

"He ought to be happy.  Scalia made me and everybody else in the
industry out to be complete assholes."

"I don't know, Trevor.  I think John's favorite part is where you
implied that by being fat, Scalia was part of the problem.  He'd never
admit it, though."

"What do you think "

I hadn't heard anyone come up behind me, but the phone was suddenly
snatched from my hand and slammed down into its cradle.

I spun in my chair, ready to defend myself against a gang of security
guards but found myself faced with much worse.

"Dad ..."

"What the hell would possess you to go on national television and
suggest that damn near everything Terra makes be outlawed?"

"And then just walk off and leave Scalia to sit there for another
fifteen minutes and drive his point home unchallenged?"

I had to scoot my chair back so that I could look up at him without
hurting my neck.  For some reason it didn't occur to me to stand.

"The stuff about my trust "

"You want to play with the big kids, Trevor?  The big kids go out and
find information like that.  They bribe people, they dig through
garbage cans..."

That was the problem.  I didn't want to play with the big kids.

"Do you know how many phone calls I've gotten this morning?"  my father
continued.  "I've talked to the governor, three senators, and I don't
even know how many attorneys.  The head of our food division called me
at home and he's already projecting a two percent drop in their snack
cake division's sales next month."

In retrospect, the only thing that kept me from giggling at a grown man
worrying about people eating fewer Ho Ho's was that the man was my
father.  No matter how badly your relationship deteriorates and how
estranged you become, it's hard not to think of your father, on some
subconscious level, as Santa Claus, Albert Einstein, and Alexander the
Great all wrapped up in one.

The phone began ringing again, but I didn't dare answer.  Anne probably
thought I'd hung up on her.  Great.

"I know, Dad.  I know I did a lousy job, okay?  And I shouldn't have
walked off like that, but people aren't going to give up their Ding
Dongs because of what I say any more than they're going to give up
their cigarettes."

"So I'm overreacting?"  Suddenly my father's stylish tie looked like it
was strangling him.  He lifted the New Yorf( Times that for some reason
I hadn't noticed in his hand and began reading a front-page piece.

"Tobacco Industry Spokesman Suggests Outlawing Cigarettes."

"That's not fair.  It's taken out of conte "

"Fifty years of legal strategy," he shouted, waving the paper around in
the air.  "And you decide to just undo it in a day."

"Come on, Dad, now you are overreacting.  I didn't undo anything.  Any
politician who even jokes about outlawing cigarettes would get
crucified."

My father seemed as surprised by the irritation in my voice as I was.
He gestured around my empty office.  "Well, look where your little
tantrum's gotten you.  I suppose it's my fault for giving you too much.
You never had to grow up; you never had to do anything for yourself.
Maybe if you'd have been forced to struggle for something, you'd have
more self-respect."

"Maybe," I said, a little dismissively.  I just didn't need this right
now.

His eyes narrowed.  "Did you ever stop to think how this makes me look?
Let me tell you: Between you and your mother I look like an ass."

And with that observation, he spun around and disappeared through my
door.  So much for the possibility of reconciliation with my father.

It was clearly time for me to run away before Security showed up, but
instead I just sat there thinking about all the years I'd spent at
Terra and how Paul Trainer had finally gotten his revenge on me for
defying his Godlike authority.  He hadn't just fired me; he'd made me
out to be an evil, spoiled bastard in front of the whole world.  I
looked around me again.  And where the hell was my stuff?  A lot of it
wasn't company property it was mine.  What gave them the right to take
it?

I slid my hand across the top of the desk where I'd kept my mug.  It
was shaped like a dinosaur's head and had been given to me by my mother
when I was only a kid.  The history of my life was dyed into it: The
red of childhood Kool-Aid faded to pink from my hinge-drinking years in
college and now slowly being covered by the brown of coffee.  Someday,
I wanted it to be stained with pureed vegetables or whatever it was you
ate when you were a hundred.  It was mine.  And I wanted it back.

That stupid mug, in a matter of seconds, became a symbol as powerful as
the American flag to me.  I jumped out of my chair and nearly ran out
of my office, heading straight for the elevator.  About halfway there,
someone said something that I didn't catch but that was obviously
directed at me.  I stopped short and spun around.

"What?  What was that?"

Silence.

"WHO SAID THAT?"  I shouted.

No one answered.

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

I shot out of the elevator and started banging my hand on the thick
wall of bulletproof glass that Terra's management worked behind.  The
woman on the other side seemed startled initially, but then I saw her
reach beneath her desk for something.  The alarm button, I assumed.

Then there was an unexpected buzz and click as the door in front of me
unlocked.

"Mr.  Barnett " the woman said, but I ignored her and ran past.

"Hello, Trevor.  You " Trainer's secretary said, but I blew right by
her too, forcing my way through the CEO's door.

Strangely, he was standing in the middle of his enormous office, hands
on hips, as though he was in deep thought.  He looked up when his door
bounced off the wall.

"Where's my mug!"

"What?"

"It looks like a dinosaur.  It's mine and I want it back."

He spread his wrinkly palms out in a gesture of peace.  "Um.  Okay."

"You had no right to throw me to the dogs like that."

"You had the jet and you were close," Trainer said, moving over to his
desk and taking a seat on its edge.  "They gave us three goddamn hours
to get someone out there or they were going to put Scalia on alone."

"And now you're making it my fault."

Now all this all might seem inordinately stupid, but this whole
sensation of being really pissed off was kind of appealing to me and,
besides, what more could Trainer do to me?  I mean, how much more
screwed could I possibly be?

"Well, I have to admit that you didn't really stick to the script, but
you showed a hell of a lot of passion."

I must have looked like I was ready to shoot up the place, because he
suddenly took on the soothing tone you'd use on a child in the grips of
a tantrum.  "Now, take it easy, Trevor.  You seem upset right now.  Why
don't we go get you that mug of yours and you can have a nice cold
drink out of it.  How would that be?  Would that make you feel
better?"

He slid off his desk and put a hand in the small of my back, pushing me
gently toward a side door to his office, where surely there was a
Security team with a butterfly net in just my size.  Reality turned out
to be even more strange.

The office we walked into was a mirror image of Trainer's and was
decorated with essentially the same deep wood paneling, understated
art, and plush sofas.  It had been vacant ever since the death of his
executive vice president and childhood friend (emphysema, though
everyone said stress).

"There it is," Trainer said, hurrying me over to a large desk covered
with my stuff and handing it to me.

"That's a good-looking mug, son.  I can see how you'd want to keep
ahold of it."

He wandered over to a cozy conversation pit and motioned to the chair
in front of him.

"Want something in that?  Some juice?  Water?"

I shook my head and sat down.

"You're sure?"  he said, putting his feet on a slate-topped table that
had black marks exactly matching the heels of his shoes.

"Yeah."

"You know, Trevor, I've been feeling like things have been getting away
from me lately.  Either I'm not as quick as I once was, or there's just
a whole lot more to think about..."

He checked to see if I was listening, and I nodded to prove I was.

"I was thinking I could convince you to help me out.  But you're right
I shouldn't have had your things brought up.  I shouldn't have
presumed."

I just sat there.

"So what do you say, Trevor?  Are you interested in the job?"

A little more sitting.

"Trevor?"

"I don't think I understand what you're asking me, Mr.  Trainer."

"Call me Paul."

I felt my eyebrows rise.  You could count the number of people who
called him Paul on one hand.  There was wide speculation that his own
mother had referred to him as "sir."

"I don't think I understand what you're asking me, Paul."

"And I'm not sure how I can be more clear.  I want you to work directly
for me.  To help me out."

"Uh ..."

He bared his teeth in a wide smile.  "Goddamn obesity statistics.  I
almost wet myself.  Have you seen the footage?  That fat son of a bitch
looked like you'd hit him with a bat.  I'm pretty sure I heard America
let out a loud cheer.  Where'd you come up with that diabetes stuff? Is
it true?"

"Most of it.  I think."

"Doesn't matter.  That's the great thing about statistics you can make
them say anything you want.  If the press calls you on anything, let me
know and we'll get our guys to cook something up."

"I heard the CEO of our food division is kind of upset," I said.  "I
guess he's worried about their cupcake sales."

"Jesus Christ!  I've got a multibillion-dollar industry crumbling
around me, and that guy sits around worrying about a two percent drop
in the sales of Twinkies.  If he calls you direct, you transfer him
straight to me.  Moron .. ."

"You know, Paul .. ."

A voice floated in from his office.  "Mr.  Trainer?"

"I'm in here."

Richard Horton, the company's CFO, appeared in the doorway.  I couldn't
help noticing that he called Paul "Mr.  Trainer."

"How are we doing, Rich?"

Horton was the opposite of what you'd expect from a guy who could keep
the numbers of a huge multinational corporation in his head.  He was
good-looking, relaxed, and well liked by just about everyone who'd ever
met him.  I'd always found him a little intimidating.

"Right now we've got a one and a half percent drop in stock prices more
or less across the board," he said, standing in the middle of the room
with his hands shoved in his pockets.  "It'll probably get a little
worse, but not much."

Then another interesting thing happened.  My father came in through the
same door.  He moved slowly up behind Horton, staring at me as I
clutched my mug.

"What's Wall Street saying?"  Trainer asked.

"Trevor's comments worried them," he said matter-of-factly.  "Not so
much the talk of de legalization more the loss of control on national
television.  Add that to the Montana suit and it didn't exactly stop
the erosion of confidence in the industry."

I was trying to calculate what a one and a half percent drop in stock
prices meant in real money, but stopped counting before there were
enough zeros to make my mouth go dry.

My father didn't.  "So we're talking about hundreds of millions of
dollars here?"

Trainer winked at me.  "I guess we ought and try to keep you off the TV
for a while, eh Trevor?"  He turned back to Horton.  "How are the
diabetes-related stocks doing?"

"Up.  You ought to do pretty well."

"Thanks, Rich."

Horton left, but my father stayed.

"Have a seat, Edwin," Trainer said, pointing to a chair.  "Do you mind
if we use your office for this, Trevor?  I'm having a new computer
installed in mine."  He nudged me with his foot.  "I'm on level four."
No doubt a reference to Darius's new game.

To his credit, my father managed to take the subtly delivered news that
his screw up son had an office adjoining Paul Trainer's without any
overt breast-beating or hair rending.

"Edwin, last week you told me there was an eighty percent chance that
we were going to lose the Montana suit.  I want to know what we're
going to do about that.  Trevor here says we bankrupt ourselves and
settle with those bastard lawyers for a few billion."  s

"You understand, Paul, that Trevor has no legal training ..."

"I don't give a shit about his legal training.  Do you agree with him
or not?"

My father managed a smile that didn't look too strained.  "The
plaintiffs' attorneys are going to want to be paid.  They'll take a
deal."

"And on that day, we throw open the floodgates... ."

My father looked like he was about to say something, but Trainer held
his hand up.

"And that's just the class-action suits.  What about the individual
suits?  How many are we fighting right now?"

"Somewhere around twenty-five hundred."

"Jesus."  He faced me again.  "What's your crystal ball say, Trevor.
What's our future?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my father glaring at me like
he had so many times throughout my childhood.

"We drown, I guess.  The law and public opinion our culture are moving
against us.  They have been for a long time."

"You're not a lawyer, Trevor," my dad said again, as though that was
some basic flaw in my character.

"That wasn't a legal opinion."

"He's right," Trainer said.  "If you take enough wild shots you
eventually hit something.  Our stock price is going to continue to
slide, we're going to continue to have to write checks to these whiny
assholes.  Pretty soon we're not going to be able to raise capital or
get loans."  He shook his head slowly.  "We've got the hearing on the
new surgeon general's report day after tomorrow, and we don't have a
lot of friends on that panel.  They smell blood and votes, and they're
going to be grandstanding.  Insufferable bastards."

He leaned back a little farther into the soft tapestry of the sofa and
suddenly seemed to be talking to himself.  "We can't just sit back and
fight a defensive war anymore.  No, not anymore.  It's time to take a
stand."

Eighteen.

There were about twenty people moving along the buffet, trays gliding
in front of them on a set of chrome rails.  I watched Anne from a
distance as she balanced a carton of milk on top of the mountain of
food she'd created and shot the people in front of her annoyed looks as
they agonized, read labels, and asked poignant nutritional questions.

Having already eaten in the executive dining room I took a seat at an
empty table and continued to spy on her as she happily grazed her way
toward the cash register.  According to a mathematical theory called
the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, it was impossible to observe
something without affecting it.  My relationship with Anne was absolute
proof of Dr.  Heisenberg's genius.  When I was around, she always
seemed a little bit on guard though perhaps not so much against me as
against herself.  She seemed horrified by the possibility that she
might let a smile appear on her face or that she might show me
something beneath that all-business facade of hers.

She paid and then scanned the cafeteria for an empty table.  When her
gaze crossed my part of the room, I waved.  Just a casual little wave,
nothing that could be prosecuted under the stalker laws.  More of a
"what a coincidence that I happened to be in this part of town, miles
from my office, in this particular restaurant, just when you were
having a late lunch" kind of wave.

She squinted at me for a moment and then walked over with perhaps a
little less hesitancy than I was used to.

"You hung up on me."

"Actually, I didn't.  My father snuck up behind me and grabbed the
phone.  Sorry."

She looked around but as luck would have it, there were no more tables.
I motioned to the chair in front of me, and she took it.

"You're still wearing a suit," she observed, dumping her silverware out
of its bag and attacking something that might have been Asian
noodles.

"There's been a slight hiccup in my plan."

"You had a plan?"

"Maybeplan is too strong a word.  But after my performance yesterday, I
was pretty confident that I was going to get fired."

"I take it you didn't," she said through a full mouth.

"Huh uh.  They just moved me out of my old job to a new one."

"What are you doing now?"

"I'm Beelzebub."

"Excuse me?"

"Uh, I'm working directly for Paul Trainer.  He gave me the old
executive vice president's office."

She didn't seem surprised by any of this.  To her, it was all just part
of a conspiracy I'd been involved in from the start.

"Congratulations."

"I didn't want the job."

"But you took it, didn't you?"

"I guess."

"So now you're the assistant to the CEO of Terracorp," she said coldly.
"Wow.  That's an important job.  I'm sure you'll do well."

This wasn't working out the way I'd fantasized.  The glimmer I'd seen
in her yesterday, and that I was here hoping to fan, was almost too
faint to see now.

"It's all kind of an accident," I said, sounding a little desperate. "I
mean, I took you to that party and let you chase people around and
insult them,

I gave the board a report that consisted of ten words.  Last night I
got on TV and completely threw the party line out the window, then
walked off the stage.  Trainer must be getting senile ..."

"I think you're selling yourself short, Trevor," she said in a tone
suggesting she wasn't even close to buying what I was telling her.  "I
would think that a guy who doesn't believe in anything and spends all
his time trying to convince himself that he has no responsibility for
anything would be perfect for that job.  Maybe Paul Trainer knows
exactly what he's doing."

"I... I don't think that's fair."

"What part?"

Good question.

"Have you had a chance to think about what you said on TV yesterday?"
she asked, pushing her tray away from her for the moment.  "Have you
thought about where you want all this to go?  Or are you going to just
drift along with your eyes closed?"

I didn't answer.

"If this sounds mean, I'm sorry, I don't mean it to, but you're like a
sail: empty unless you're filled with whatever wind happens to be
blowing at the time."

I would say I felt deflated, but that would sort of support her sail
analogy, wouldn't it?

"In a way, I kind of envy the opportunity you've got, Trevor.  At the
very least, you have ringside seats.  Won't it be interesting if the
industry loses and those seven hundred thousand Montanans are mad
enough that they don't let their lawyers talk them into settling? Won't
it be interesting if they end up taking everything the industry has?"

I was feeling a little of that unfamiliar anger again when I finally
spoke up.  "Maybe more interesting than you think."

Her expression turned a bit guarded.  "Why do you say that?"

I stood, a little stiffly.  It was way past time to walk away.

"What do you figure they'd do with all those assets, Anne?  Dismantle
them and sell them for ten cents on the dollar?  Or would they make a
deal

with Paul Trainer to keep running things and fill their bank accounts
with the profits?  Moral outrage can sometimes get lost in these kinds
of numbers."

She surprised me by grabbing my arm as I began what I thought was as
dignified an exit as could be hoped for under the circumstances.

"Trevor, can you see that you may actually be in a position to do
something here?  To maybe influence the way things will be in the
future "

"I'm not in a position to do anything," I said.  "Trainer decided for
some reason to make a show of asking my opinion and pretending to
listen, but I'm not stupid enough to believe it."

"Are you sure you're not just telling yourself what's easy to hear?  No
one expects anything from a bystander, right?  But what if you could
save one life.  Just one?  That'd be pretty heroic."

I pulled my arm free.  "It's more complicated than you want to admit,
Anne."

"Maybe."

I looked down at her, and she didn't turn away.  "Why don't you have
diiyier with me, Anne?  Give me a couple of hours to change your mind
about me.  I can't guarantee the quality of the company, but I can
promise you some really exceptional food."  I pointed at her tray,
still piled high.  "And lots of it."

That made her smile, but she tried to hide it with her napkin.

"You know, Trevor, I don't doubt that somewhere under all that
confusion, you're probably an okay guy.  And, if it doesn't make me
sound bad saying it, you're really beautiful.  But I don't think so."

Nineteen.

The next morning, I found myself sitting be-neath a large portrait of
my grandfather, at a gigantic table occupied by the CEOs of America's
major tobacco companies.  With the exception of Trainer, they had a
fairly uniform look to them: sixtyish; conservatively dressed in gray
suits and white or blue shirts; short, dark hair.  All spoke with
upper-crust southern accents that tended to degenerate a little when
they got angry though only about three-quarters had the earthy
hoarseness that used to be a prerequisite for the job.

Trainer was the only man standing.  He was wearing one of those
hundred-years-out-of-style suits he favored in a color that, depending
on the light, might have been purple.  At least ten years older than
anyone else in the room, he paced persistently through the haze
generated by the cigarette in his hand.

"I'm not sure all of you know Trevor Barnett."

I nodded, forcing myself to make eye contact with everyone in the room
and trying not to dwell on how out of place I felt.

"I've created a new position executive vice president of strategy and
Trevor's agreed to take it on.  I've asked him to sit in with us."

It was the first time there had been any mention of a title for me and
while I thought it sounded pretty impressive, no one else seemed to.  I
was likely that their impressions of me had already been formed based
on my brilliant work on television.  Not a single one of them
acknowledged me in any way.  Trainer paced for a few more seconds and
then stopped short.

"We're going to lose this suit and we're going to have to settle."

He seemed to be daring the men in the room to disagree with him, and no
one took him up on it.

"We don't have any friends out there anymore.  The politicians are
frozen, the anti tobacco forces are on the attack, the nonsmokers are
bitching about secondhand smoke, and our customers think we're over
here twisting our mustaches trying to figure out ways to kill them
faster."  He went into motion again.  "The world's changed legally,
politically, economically and we're still playing the same game we were
twenty-five years ago.  Have I missed anything, Trevor?"

I glanced up from the notes I'd been taking and saw that Trainer was
looking directly at me.

"I'm sorry?"

"Son, we've got people to do the minutes.  Have I missed anything?"

Everyone turned toward me.

My initial reaction was typical: Who was I to talk at this meeting?
Then I came to the odd realization that the combination of my job going
through industry documents, my genealogy, and my degree probably made
me more knowledgeable about the history and philosophy behind the
tobacco industry than anyone in this room.  Maybe I did have something
worthwhile to say.

"I think there's a question we need to ask ourselves: Why don't we have
any friends left?"

"You tell me," Trainer said, making enough of a show of listening to me
that the others didn't dare show their irritation.

I cleared my throat.  "I have to wonder if a big part of it is that we
spend so much time trying not to make enemies that we don't have any
time left to try to make friends.  People get behind offense, not
defense.  How can anyone rally behind an industry that's still half
denying cigarettes are bad for you and winning lawsuits by hiding
behind technicalities?  I mean,

we've always done well for ourselves, but it's generally been through
manipulation and legal tricks.  No one respects either of those things.
People get excited about winners," I said, moving into territory that I
knew too well, "not people who spend all their time trying n( t to
lose."

"I'll buy that," Trainer said, with what could have passed for a
respectful nod.  "So what do we do, Trev?"

That was a lot harder question to answer.  "I'm not sure there's
anything we can do.  We've bought politicians, scientists, media you
name it.  We've ruthlessly bullied anyone who's gotten in our way.  In
the end, though, we did too good a job.  Like you've said before, the
politicians are terrified: of us.  Of smokers.  Of the antismoking
lobby.  Of tobacco farmers.  And after a hundred years of cultivating
that terror, it's backfiring on us."  I needed to take a breath but was
afraid of losing my momentum, so I plunged forward.  "The industry
didn't anticipate the judicial branch running the country."

"It's a disservice to this great country," Trainer said.  "If America
was founded on anything, it was personal responsibility, self-reliance,
and tobacco."

"That's true.  But it was also founded on capitalism run amok: the
trusts, the robber barons, slavery, child labor.  We aren't going back
to those times.  In fact, the current is pretty strong in the opposite
direction."

Chuck Fay, the head of America's second largest tobacco company and a
tough old bastard who'd done multiple tours of duty in Vietnam because
he was "having such a damn good time," spoke up.

"But what the hell does that mean, exactly?  I mean, I'm on board with
you and I'm goddamn well ready to get off my knees and kick some ass.
But how?"

Honestly, I didn't know.  I wasn't sure how best to say it, but the
point I'd been trying to make was that we were probably doomed and
should all be looking for jobs.

"And whose ass?"  another man said.  I wasn't sure which company he
ran.  "Trevor here keeps telling us what's wrong and not offering a
solution."

I felt my heart rate jump at the criticism, but Paul Trainer came to my
rescue.

"It's not Trevor's job to fix this industry he's just here to provide
information.  The buck stops with us."

Everyone settled back into their chairs, and I once again faded
comfortably into the background.

"As I see it, there are two things we need to focus on.  The first is
that, while people are pretty cynical about the tobacco industry,
they're just as cynical about politicians.  Those bastards have been
running around criticizing us all over the press and then getting into
bed with us every night for years.  That has to stop we've got to drain
the political currency out of that kind of shit."

"Just tell me how," Chuck Fay said, obviously excited about the
prospect of a stand-up fight.

"Action, Chuck.  It's the one thing that terrifies politicians.  It's
easy to spout off about morality as long as it doesn't affect anyone's
life, but when it does, the people who were happy with the status quo
get pissed."  He gestured dramatically.  "Everyone's turned against us
because it's easy to turn against us.  But when push comes to shove,
I'm not all that sure the majority hates us all that passionately. Take
nonsmokers.  They hate us because they see us as the evil empire we've
been portrayed to be and because they figure we cost taxpayers a bunch
of money.  But they aren't directly affected by smoking in and of
itself, and frankly no one's stupid enough to believe they're going to
get a tax cut if the tobacco industry dries up and blows away.  What
about smokers our customers?  They hate us because it's easier to blame
us for killing them than it is to blame themselves.  But in the end,
they sure don't want some fat bastard like Angus Scalia taking their
cigarettes away."

"You were talking about action," Fay said.  He was the only person in
the room who didn't seem intimidated by Trainer.  "What action?  How
can we control twelve asshole Montanans sitting in a jury box?"

I didn't know Trainer well, but I'd have to say that he seemed pleased
with the way the meeting was progressing.  The smell of panic was in
the air.  Stock options, retirement benefits, prestige everything these
men held dear was starting to realistically look like it could just go
away one day.

"Make no mistake, gentlemen.  We are at war," Trainer said.  "And we're
losing.  The enemy has been chipping away at us, and now we find
ourselves weakened and outnumbered."

The way he was speaking and his emphatic gesturing reminded me of the
beginning of the movie Patton.  But instead of a huge flag as his
background, I imagined a more potent symbol of our country: a giant
dollar bill.

"As I see it, we have one last chance at a counteroffensive.  Every day
we delay reduces our chances of victory."

Honestly, this was starting to get a little silly.  But there was
something about Trainer's schizophrenic charisma that made it almost
work.  He paced back and forth a few more times and then came around
the table, approaching me with his hand outstretched.  I shook it, and
he slapped me on the back and leaned into my ear.  "You did a hell of a
job, son," he said quietly.  "I'm proud of you.  Now if you could
excuse us ..."

I have to admit to feeling a little pride as I walked from the
boardroom.  For the first time since all this began, I hadn't come off
as a complete idiot.  That small step in the right direction seemed to
be masking the vague queasiness I'd felt since my last (in more ways
than one, perhaps) conversation with Anne.  So I focused on it.

Two hours later, the board was still locked in its meeting.  What were
they talking about?  Why had I been asked to leave?  I gave those
questions about five minutes of thought before putting my mind to a
more pressing question.  What was it exactly that the executive vice
president of strategy did?

I wandered around my office running my fingers over the rich surfaces,
paced it off (thirty by forty feet), put a few things away, and then
finally just sat down behind my expansive desk.  Unfortunately, my
computer wasn't on line yet, so no surfing and I'd given Trainer my
only copy of Darius's new game.  A few more minutes and I found myself
staring out my door at the empty desk just outside.

That was it!  What new executive vice presidents did was hire
assistants.  But how did one go about that?  Pretty much everyone I
knew at the company had made it clear they hated me though in light of
my new title, I was guessing they were having a change of heart on that
point.

Honestly, I needed more than an assistant.  I needed an ally.  I was
used to my moral compass being pretty stable (okay, stuck), and right
now it was spinning a little bit out of control.

I now see what I did next for the stupid and desperate act it was, but
if there is one great truth that history has taught us, it is that many
great things have been accomplished with stupid and desperate acts.

I dialed the phone and put on the wireless headset, then stood and
began walking around the edges of my office.

"Smokeless Youth."

"Anne Kimball, please."

"Can I ask who's calling?"

"Trevor Barnett."

I was put on hold for a moment, and then the woman came back on.  "I'm
afraid she's not here.  Can I take a message?"

"Why don't you transfer me to John O'Byrne?"

"One moment."

I examined a large plant by the door while I waited.  I couldn't for
the life of me figure out if it was fake.

"Trevor!  How are you?  I saw you on TV quite a performance.  Anne
tells me you're reporting directly to Trainer now?  That's exciting
news.  Very exciting.  How did it happen?"

"I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out myself.  Is Anne there? I
need to talk to her for a sec."

"I think she's in her office.  Hang on and let me check."

I waited another thirty seconds before Anne's tired and irritated voice
came on the line.

"This is Anne."  A

"Hey, it's Trevor."

"John told me."

She was obviously angry with me for not taking the hint that she didn't
want to talk.  i

"I'm not sure how else to say this, Trevor, but "

"Before you say anything, let me tell you that this Ln't a social
call."

"It's not?"

"Remember what you said about being jealous of my ringside seats?  It
looks like I've got an extra ticket."

"I don't understand."

"I'm offering you a job.  I need an assistant.  You'd sit pretty much
right outside Paul Trainer's office and watch all the important comings
and goings.  You'd be able to sink your fangs directly into the
industry's jugular..."

Silence.

"Anne?  Are you still there?"  "I'm here."

"Well?  What do you think?"

It took a few moments for her to answer.  "I'm not sure what you're
asking me, Trevor.  What's the goal here?"

"What do you want it to be?"

"I'm not sure there's anything I could accomplish there, Trevor.  I
mean, we know everything we need to know about the industry.  My
challenge is getting people to do something productive with that
information ..."

"What about helping me?  You could do that."

She exhaled loudly in what might have been a laugh.  "Help you do
what?"

"We'd have to work that out."

"I... I don't think so, Trevor.  I just don't see myself sitting behind
a desk at Terra."

"What about all that stuff you said about how I might be in a position
to affect the way things are?  I think you're being a little selfish,
don't you?"

"Selfish?"

"Definitely.  What if you could help me save just one person's life?" I
said, paraphrasing her words to me the day before.  "Wouldn't that be
worth a little moral discomfort on your part?"

The line went dead.

Twenty.

Paul Trainer hadn't said a word throughout the drive, but I wouldn't
say he seemed nervous.  Just determined.  He'd opted for a more
conventional suit than normal, and his arms were folded across his
chest in a way that made his elbows look like they going to poke
through at any moment.  Sitting on the other side of the limo's wide
rear seat was my father.  Now, he did appear to be a little worked up.
Whether it was the fact that we were on our way to a congressional
hearing about the new surgeon general's report or my presence, though,
I couldn't be sure.  When he talked to me it was in a friendly,
carefully easygoing tone that sounded so wrong that I found myself
watching his lips to see if they matched up with the soundtrack.

Quite a change from last time we'd met and yet another reminder that
everyone even my own flesh and blood gauged their relationship to me
based solely on my status at the company.  I know it's hard to believe
after the week I'd had, but I think this was as uncomfortable as I'd
ever felt.  I actually caught myself fantasizing that our driver would
lose control and run us into the Potomac so I could swim the hell out
of there.

As we got closer to our destination, my father began to focus his
attention on Paul.  I squinted out the window at the bright white of
Washington's monuments as they flashed by, trying to remember which was
which.

"We don't have much more time," I heard him say.  "We need to go over a
few things."

"Same old crap," Trainer observed and joined me in enjoying the view.

"It's not just "

Trainer waved a hand regally and we rode the rest of the way in
silence.

"You've got to be kidding me ..."

Trainer banged on the glass separating us from the driver and it slid
down.  "We're not getting out here.  Take us around to the back
entrance."

"There is no back entrance, sir," the man said.  "I was told to drop
you here.  Someone will meet you just inside those double doors over
there and take you to the hearing room."

Trainer leaned over me and looked out the heavily tinted windows. There
were about fifty people on the sidewalk milling around in a haphazard
spiral, some carrying signs pointing out the industry's crimes against
humanity, others pumping their fists in the air and shouting slogans.
As usual, the people whose lives were enhanced by the mild, relaxing
flavor of our product had opted not to show their support in person.

"Goddamn those prima donnas!"  Trainer spat, undoubtedly referring to
the congressmen we were going to meet.  "I'll bet they found a back
entrance!"

The crowd was starting to become interested in the limousine sitting
silently alongside them, but hadn't yet broken formation to
investigate.

"If we're going to go, we should go now," I said, shoving the door
open, "while we've got surprise on our side."

I was recognized the moment I exited the limo, and the loud boos
started immediately.  Trainer slipped in behind, sandwiching himself
between me and my father as we pressed through the crowd.  I kept an
eye on the tight corridor of people that formed for anyone who seemed
to have been especially deranged by the death of a loved one or the
cancer spreading unchecked through their internal organs.  I found Anne
instead.

She wasn't one of the sign toters and she wasn't booing.  She just
stood there, looking a little sad.  I began to slow as I approached but
felt Trainer's bony hand in my back.  "Jesus Christ, boy!  Move your
ass!  These people are out for blood!"

The HEARING ROOM wasn't what I'd expected.  No Romanesque monuments to
Abe Lincoln of- paintings of George Washington.  No marble archways
with Latin slogans across them.  It was more like the Fox studio I'd
been in or one of those old movie sets where everything was just a
facade propped up by two-by-fours.  Appropriate, I suppose.

It kind of felt like a wedding when we walked down the only strip of
floor not filled with spectators.  Trainer, feeling safer now, took the
lead and walked with what seemed like complete confidence.  All eyes
were on him, and I was grateful to go more or less unnoticed.

Near the front, there was a half-full row of chairs that had been
blocked with a red rope, and I recognized the other industry CEOs
despite their uncharacteristically pale and shiny faces.  They didn't
seem to share Paul's sense of inner calm, though I honestly couldn't
understand why.  They were accustomed to being held up as the model of
modern evil, and Trainer was the only one of them who had been called
on to testify.  Honestly, this surgeon general's report was just the
latest in a long line of non events in the history of the industry.

I figured I was supposed to sit in the row with the CEOs since they
were the only seats available, and I slowed to step over the rope.

"You're with me," Trainer said.

"Huh?"

"You're with me, Trevor.  Edwin, why don't you hang back?  I don't want
to go up there surrounded by lawyers."

It's hard to describe my father's reaction to that.  What is it they
say?  If looks could kill?  But it wasn't directed at Trainer he had
his back turned.  It was directed at me.  I pulled my leg back over the
rope and caught up with my new boss, taking a seat next to him at a
table with a microphone on it.

I tried to mimicked Trainer's slightly bored and authoritarian aura,

though I doubt that it worked.  Good practice, though, and it helped me
forget the fact that my father was trying to glare a hole in the back
of my head.

About five minutes passed before the congressmen began to file in.  The
chairman called the hearing to order with a few strained pleasantries
and then dove right in with a mini speech about the wisdom of the
American people and how organized, peaceful civil disobedience could
bring about meaningful change.  Honestly, I didn't see the connection,
but the congressman's words did seem to affect Trainer: His posture
straightened, his skin looked a little tighter, and his eyes shone a
little brighter.

Finally, the unashamedly political soliloquy ended and the congressman
turned his attention to me.

"Could you introduce yourself, sir?  Are you Mr.  Trainer's
attorney?"

I tapped the microphone.  "Uh, no sir.  I'm "

"This is Trevor Barnett," Trainer said, saving me yet again.  "He's an
executive vice president at Terra and my personal advisor."

According to a research piece I'd skimmed, Carl Godfrey, the chairman
of this hearing, was a deeply religious man who'd been married forever
and had three successful children.  A generally honest and moderate
Democrat who was clearly influenced by America's current dark mood
regarding all things tobacco.  Which I supposed he should be.  By the
people, for the people.

"Sir, I assume that you've read the new surgeon general's report," he
said after the introductions were done.

"I've read a detailed summary by my Science Department," Trainer
replied, neglecting to mention the legal report and my brilliant, if
concise, historical perspective.

"And what did your Science people conclude?"  Godfrey asked.  The other
politicians seemed content to just listen.

"Not much, really.  They pointed out a few discrepancies in statistics
and samples.  Mostly they just dumbed it down.  This kind of technical
stuff tends to go right over my head."

That statement was regarded with suspicion and disdain by nearly
everyone on the panel.  They saw it as the beginning of the ignorance
defense popularized and perfected right here in Washington.  The one
exception was Congressman Sweeny, who seemed to have recovered from his
multiple run-ins with Anne Kimball at my father's party.  He was
nodding sagely.

"Well, I did read the repojt," Godfrey said.  "I also looked through
some of the prior reports and the tobacco industry's responses to them.
I have to say that they made me ... tired.  As near as I can tell,
there are thousands of studies that all seem to pretty much agree that
smoking is absolutely terrible for you.  That it causes cancer,
emphysema, heart disease, and a hundred other things.  Not to mention
the addictiveness of it.  And with every new report, these conclusions
become more and more certain."

"The industry has conceded that cigarettes are dangerous and
addictive," Trainer pointed out.

"That's true," Godfrey admitted.  "But only recently.  Why is that?"

"Sir," Trainer started, "there have been incredible scientific strides
since this issue first came up.  I'd point out that the early studies
were not only inconclusive but often pointed to smoking being good for
you.  To this day, the process with which cigarette smoking supposedly
does damage is not completely understood.  The first surgeon general's
report back in the sixties did move closer to putting the dangers into
a more reliable context but the studies were certainly not perfect.  We
had some fairly zealous antismoking campaigners doing things like
shaving rats' backs and painting them with nicotine.  We even had one
group give beagles tracheotomies and teach them to smoke.  We've also
had prior surgeon generals who've made absolutely false statements
about the industry.  In our minds and obviously in the minds of the
public who continue to use our products the evidence was not
conclusive."

He sounded great.  Ultimately reasonable, calm, benevolent, and just a
little bit frail like a kindly grandfather.  Unfortunately, not
everyone was as impressed as I was.  I tend to only recognize
politicians who've been caught sleeping with their interns, so I didn't
know the name of the man who suddenly cut in.

"I have to put a stop to this ridiculousness.  All I want to know is
how can you sleep at night knowing that you produce a product that
kills hundreds of thousands of people every year?"

"I suppose the same way you sleep at night knowing that you've never so
much as hinted at wanting to outlaw that product because people should
be free to make their own decisions about their health and because it's
a cornerstone of the American economy."

Godfrey cut in before a shouting match could start.  "I'm sure we all
appreciate the history lesson, but I have to wonder where you're going
with all this."

"If you could just indulge me for a few more moments, sir.... As I was
saying, our scientists have gone over this report with a fine-tooth
comb.  And they tell me they believe that scientific and statistical
methods have caught up with the problem."

I was with Godfrey where was he going with this?

"So, in a nutshell, our people are in agreement with the surgeon
general's conclusions."

The room suddenly grew loud as the spectators all began talking at
once.  I glanced back at the CEOs, and found that about half had turned
from bedsheet pale to a kind of greenish gray.  My father looked like
he was going to vomit.

"Would you expand on that, sir?"  Godfrey said, sounding as though he
thought he hadn't heard correctly.  Where were all the smooth denials
and obscure legal arguments that defined these meetings?  It no doubt
sounded to him like it did to me that we'd just given away the farm.

"I'm not sure what more I can say, sir.  We agree with the report."
Trainer cut himself off there, but his tone and body language finished
his thought for him: Now what are you going to do about it?

"Why didn't you tell me what you were going to do?"  My father was
talking to Trainer, but looking at me.  I could see him in my
peripheral vision as I watched the memorial to one of America's
earliest tobacco farmers, Thomas Jefferson, speed by.  The sun was
setting on the city, giving it a kind of a magical quality that its
inhabitants probably never noticed.

"We could have gone over your testimony, polished it..  .."

Trainer frowned deeply.  "What you're talking, about is putting in a
bunch of allegedly-, and taking everything else out.  That misses the
whole point, doesn't it, Edwin?  I -didn't want this to seem lawyered
to death.  Everything that's come out of our mouths for the last twenty
years has been sterilized by a pack of lawyers.  People see right
through that."

"But it protects us down the road," my father protested.  A little
stupidly, I thought.

"Protects us from what, Edwin?  Lawsuits?  I spent six hundred million
dollars on lawyers last year and I'm not sure I wouldn't have been just
as well off donating it all to a bunch of anti tobacco zealots.  I
figure I'd be in the exact same position I'm in today."

"Are you sure you know what you're doing here, Paul?"  my father said,
sounding a little insulted.  "Have you talked to the board about
this?"

"Hell yes, I've talked to the board.  I've talked to all the goddamn
boards."  In his reflection in the window, I saw him look at his watch.
"You hungry, Trevor?  We're out early."

"Out early" was something of an understatement.  The hearing had
disintegrated after Trainer agreed with everything in the report.  A
few congressmen tried to bait him with other angles, but he kept
throwing it back in their faces by agreeing with their analyses and
asking them what exactly they would propose to rectify the situation.
Action: the one thing politicians feared as much as hidden video
cameras.

"Sure," I said.  "I wouldn't mind getting something to eat.  Do you
know a good place?"

"Paul," my father said, "there's going to be a huge backlash from this.
We need to talk about how we're going to handle "

Trainer grabbed a remote control and turned on the VCR in the console
between us.  "Have you seen this, Trev?"

He pushed Play, and an MTV interview with Ian Kingwell appeared on a
tiny television screen.  I leaned forward and watched him pontificate
about the plight of children in the third world through the delicate
spirals of smoke rising from the cigarette in his hand.

Despite a fair amount of effort on my part, I hadn't been able to
forget Anne's overly kind estimate of how many people Kingwell's
on-screen smoking would kill.  The fact that I hadn't ended up
delivering those documents seemed to have completely lost its
relevance.  I would have delivered them.  I would have in a second. And
that, if anything, was the bottom line.

Twenty-One.

I'd been to a tent revival once, back during my brief and ultimately
unsuccessful search for God.  While it had been an energetic perhaps
even ecstatic affair, I'd found myself a little put off by its lack of
direction.  Darius had shown his support by dropping some acid and
joining me, but the chaos freaked him out and we left before he started
speaking in tongues.

I know it sounds as if I didn't give God a fair shake, and that may be
true, but it was starting to look like a viable substitute was about to
be provided.

It all was pretty much like I remembered: the rolling farmland, the
bright white of the tent canvas, the buffet of rich southern food (pies
on a separate display, elevated so as to be closer to heaven).  Behind
the stage, Terracorp's logo had taken the place of the more customary
worn wooden cross but was glowing in the afternoon sun with the same
promise of bliss, serenity, and belonging.

We were about an hour and a half outside of D.C. in the surprisingly
vast and rural landscape of Virginia, but I still didn't know why.

"What is all this, Paul?"  I asked, slapping a mosquito against my neck
and leaving a smear of my blood on my hand.

He pulled the tent flap back a bit further, and I could see the men and
women inside smoking free cigarettes and chatting impatiently.

"Remember back when you could count on the press?"  Trainer whispered,
ignoring my question.  "No, I guess you wouldn't.  You're too young.
There was a time, though.  A time when they didn't just go back and
forth with public opinion when they didn't kill stories that went
against their customers' sensibilities or were too hard to get across
in a ten second sound bite .. ."

"You mean back when we completely controlled them with advertising
dollars instead of only half controlling them with advertising
dollars?"

He looked back at me and smiled.  "That's exactly what I mean."

The sun was beginning to set, and the tent's shadow now stretched out
to infinity.  I followed it with my eyes, trying to find my father, who
seemed to have disappeared.

"Are you ready, Trev?"

"Ready for what?"

He thumbed toward the tent, a mischievous smile spreading across his
face.  "For them."

A funny thing about mischievous smiles: While they're cute on children
and cool on college students, they tend to be a little sinister when
worn by old men.

"You're not a spectator today, Trevor.  This is your show."

Strangely, his statement didn't surprise me.  Maybe I was starting to
get a little jaded.  The thought actually improved my mood slightly.
I'd always aspired to be jaded.

"You're the one who made those statements to the committee, Paul. Don't
you think you should be the one who does the Q and A?"

"This isn't a Q and A, son, it's a press release.  And CEOs don't do
press releases."

"Yes they do."

"Well, this one doesn't."

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Paul?  Remember what happened last
time I got on TV?"

"Oh, that was just a case of jitters.  This is going to be easy."  He
handed me a stack of three-by-five cards.  "Just read 'em like they're
written.  And remember eye contact with the cameras, too.  It'll make
you seem more honest.  And if you feel yourself getting nervous, just
picture the audience "

"In their underwear," I said, dejectedly.  "I know."

"I was going to say dead.  Who would want to see these people in their
underwear?  That's just sick."  He pulled the flap still wider.  "I'll
watch from here."

It was hot inside, and I started to sweat as I walked up an aisle lined
with hostiles for the second time that day.  The sun was beaming
directly through the tent's plastic windows, and I had to squint as I
climbed onto the stage and looked down at the twenty or so pairs of
sunglasses watching me.  There was no microphone or lectern to hide
behind, so I was forced to just stand there completely exposed.  I
cleared my throat.

"Thank you all for coming," I said, reading directly from the top card
in my hand.  "I'm Trevor Barnett, the executive vice president of
strategic planning for Terra."

On the bright side, my title kept getting weightier.

"Following an extensive review of the surgeon general's report on
smoking, the major tobacco companies have determined that the report is
overwhelmingly sound and that its conclusions are authoritative.  In
English it means that, for the most part, we agree with it."

As it had at the hearing, the volume in the room shot up, this time
accompanied by almost everyone's hands.  Trainer's performance earlier
that day hadn't been televised yet, and it seemed likely that these
reporters were hearing the industry's flip-flop for the first time.

"Based on this report and the other statements made by the government,"
I continued, "we can only conclude that the executive and legislative
branches are as strongly opposed to smoking as the judicial branch."

Curious as to where this was going, I peeled off the humidity-dampened
top card and exposed the next one.  "There is little question now that
cigarette smoking can be associated with a number of illnesses.  It is
the position of the tobacco industry that many things are bad for you
drinking,

owning a gun, eating poorly, not getting enough exercise, driving a car
but that as Americans, we should have the right to choose to do these
things and suffer the consequences."

Next card.

"Based on the current environment, though, it seems that this is an
unpopular view and that the American people want the government and the
courts to tell them what they can and cannot do in the privacy of their
own homes.  We believe that this is a very dangerous road to go down
and signals the beginning of the end for our great country which was
founded on the concepts of self-determination, personal responsibility,
and freedom."

The next card was the last, and I stared silently at it for what must
have seemed like a long time to everyone else in the tent.  There was a
drop of sweat dangling from my nose and I wiped it away with a shaking
hand.

"In response to the obvious wishes of America's government and
citizens, the tobacco companies have ..."  I lost my voice for a moment
and had to clear my throat again.  "Have closed their manufacturing
facilities and recalled their products from wholesalers and
retailers."

There were a few seconds of silence, and then everyone started
shouting.  I yelled over them, still reading.  "We feel it's important
at this point to work with Congress and the other representatives of
the people to create a strategy for how and if this product will be
sold going forward.  In the interest of public safety, though, we will
no longer sell tobacco products until a decision has been made on how
to proceed."

When I looked up, I was surprised to see much of my audience out of
their chairs and fighting their way to the tent's exit.  No doubt to
clean out the nearest 7-Eleven of their favorite brand.

As it turned out there was one last card.  I read directly from it,
though I seriously doubted anyone heard.

"I'll be answering no questions at this time."

t.

Twenty-Two.

I DUCKED INTO MY HOUSE, SLAMMED THE DOOR BE-hind me, and then ran
around closing curtains.  When every window had been covered, I
flattened myself against a wall and put my eye to a small gap remaining
in the living-room drapes.  The roving bands of withdrawal-crazed
smokers, laid-off tobacco workers, and psychotic cigarette smugglers
hadn't materialized yet, but it wouldn't be long.  Staggering, pale,
and skeletal, they'd soon be moving toward my home carrying makeshift
clubs, sharp farm implements, and torches.

Nicotine sniffed my foot and, apparently satisfied, began rubbing up
against my leg like the cat she sometimes thought she was.  I didn't
pet her, instead rechecking the curtains before finally daring to turn
on a single light.

On the flight back, Trainer had babbled even more relentlessly than he
had at dinner dipping his shriveled toe into such subjects as diverse
as tobacco, the government, video games, flowers, and sports.  Watching
the energy of a four-year-old bubble from a seventy-something's body is
kind of spooky, but I didn't let that stop me from asking a few
innocuous questions designed to determine whether or not he'd gone
completely nuts.  His answers proved inconclusive.

According to the light on my answering machine, my personal best of
three messages had been surpassed by twenty-six and I'm guessing that
was only because it ran out of tape.  I deleted them all without
playing them, took the phone off the hook, and headed for the
kitchen.

I wasn't hungry, but cooking was about the only thing that still had
the power to relax me, so I whipped out my gourmet dog-treat cookbook
and started in on a bone-shaped, beef-flavored snack for Nicotine.  She
paced furiously, seeming to fill the entire kitchen with her fuzzy bulk
and forcing me to teeter around her while I worked.

Losing myself in the feel of gooey dough between my fingers turned out
to be harder than normal.  There was a small television hanging on the
wall, and I finally gave in to temptation and flipped it on.  I only
had to surf about halfway through the channels before I came
face-to-face with myself.  Even though my television appearances so far
could only be described as unfortunate, I'm embarrassed to say that it
was kind of thrilling to see myself on the tiny screen.

The show cut away after "closed their manufacturing facilities and
recalled their products from wholesalers and retailers," probably not
wanting to show their hardworking reporters diving for the exits.  An
anchor came on and confirmed that tobacco distributors were pulling
their product from shelves all over the country and that the industry's
plants were in the process of being locked up.  Beyond that, Big
Tobacco's management wasn't returning calls and Lawrence Mann, the head
of the newly reorganized and heavily fortified Tobacco Workers Union,
had refused to comment.

With nothing but ominous silence coming out of the Carolinas, the media
had no choice but to resort to more touchy-feely man-on-the-street
interviews: a convenience-store worker ("They just came in and emptied
out our shelves!  We got nothin' to sell!"); a tobacco farmer ("I don't
know what they're playing at, but you know who's going to get hurt? The
hardworking people trying to provide for their families, that's who");
a non-smoker ("Hey, man, I don't know ... It's stupid to smoke, but if
you want to, go for it").  I switched the TV off before they got to the
inevitable guy who'd been three hours without a nicotine fix.

The knock on the door came just as I was preheating the oven.  I froze
for a moment and then lunged for the light switch.  Nicotine, thinking
it was playtime, tried to tackle me and I barely managed to get my
hands around her muzzle before she started barking.

"Shhhhl" I hissed.

The knock came again, this time louder and punctuated by a ringing of
the doorbell.

I slid down the wall and wrapped my arms around Nicotine to keep her
from making a break for the door.  My fifty-pound advantage didn't get
me far in the face of the unusual prospect of a visitor and a moment
later she was free, running for the front of the house.

I followed and found her standing with her front paws on the door,
barking merrily.  I grabbed her collar and dragged her back, trying to
decide if I should call the police.

"Trevor?"

The voice was muffled, but familiar.  A trick?  Withdrawal zombies
could be a clever lot... "Trevor?  Are you in there?"

I pushed Nicotine behind me and took a deep, cleansing breath.  Then,
in one swift motion, I unlocked the door, yanked it open, and dragged a
surprised Anne Kimball inside.

She looked frightened as I slammed the door shut obviously unaccustomed
to being pulled into dark houses by deranged men.  Nicotine circled
her, sniffing intently at this new addition to her world.  When Anne
got past her initial shock, she reached down and slid a hand across
Nicotine's soft back.

"What are you doing here?"

I was kind of pissed at her for what she'd said to me in that
cafeteria, for hanging up on me when I'd (perhaps pathetically) offered
her a job.  For not being able to see what a sensational human being I
was.

"When I said you should do something, I had no idea you'd take me so
seriously," she said.

I didn't respond, instead walking past her back down the hall.  The
oven was probably the right temperature by now.

"What just happened, Trevor?"  she said, pausing at the entrance to my
kitchen long enough to get over the disorientation everyone seemed to
feel at the sudden change in decor.  "I don't get it."

"Hell if I know," I said, sliding a spatula under my creation and
putting it in the oven.  "I read a few cards that someone else wrote.
That's it."

"That's not what they're saying on TV.  They're saying that you're the
new head of strategy at Terra and that you're behind this."

I slammed the oven shut and turned back toward her.  She looked great
in industrial kitchen light, too.  Her jeans weren't formless like her
work clothes, and she was wearing a white T-shirt that said thank you
for not smoking but also hinted at the bra beneath it.

"Really?"  I said, resisting another suicidal spark of pride.

"What's going on, Trevor?  They say it's actually happening that the
whole machine is shutting down."

I shrugged with calculated disinterest.

"Jesus, Trevor when are you going to admit that you're involved in all
this?  You have an adjoining office to Paul Trainer, for God's sake!"

I pulled a beer from the fridge and held it out toward her.  She shook
her head, so I popped the top off and started in on it myself.

"Look," she continued, "even if this wasn't your idea, you're in as
good a position as anyone with the company and the press to help shape
things going forward.  Maybe to use this as a springboard to create
meaningful laws, to educate the public "

It was wrong of me, but I laughed.  In my current situation and mood,
her optimism seemed a little goofy and naive.

"Go ahead and laugh, Trevor!  But you know what I'm saying is true.
Maybe you'd fail and not get anything done at all.  But it wouldn't
kill you to try."

"Where was all this passion when I asked you to come to Terra and help
me?"  I said, peeking into the oven to make sure I wasn't burning
Nicotine's dog biscuit.

"Come on, Trevor, you "

"Give it up, Anne.  Paul Trainer doesn't do anything that's not about
profitability.  And profitability is about selling more cigarettes
without having to pay off the people they make sick.  Like you said:
The Montana thing's got them scared.  And now they're doing something
about it."

"But it's a desperate move, Trevor there's no way to hide that. They're
going to be losing millions a day.  That could make them vulnerable ..
."

I hopped up on the counter and took another pull from my beer. "They'll
get exactly what they want, Anne.  They've never lost before, and
they're not going to this time either."

"How can you say they've never lost before?  The industry's paid out
over two hundred billion dollars in the settlement with the state
attorneys general, it's been forced to fund the antismoking lobby with
its own money, it's been coerced into agreeing to measures to stop teen
smoking "

I laughed again, and this time she looked pretty mad about it.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you laughing at me now?"

I sat there for a moment, trying to decide what to say.  She'd been
brutally honest with me, and I decided that I would get my petty
revenge by showing her the same courtesy.

"Come on, Anne.  The settlement with the states didn't cost us a thing
we just raised prices, and in the meantime, we got nearly everything we
wanted: The states agreed they could never sue us again; we tied their
payments to our profits so if sales go down, they get less money.  The
whole thing was a tobacco industry plan to make sure the states have
absolutely no incentive to actually reduce cigarette sales.  For God's
sake, was it completely lost on you people that our stock went through
the roof after we signed that deal?"  I waved around at the kitchen.
"Your great victory paid for my house."

She opened her mouth to defend herself but I cut her off.

"And as far as the funding of the anti tobacco lobby goes, we'd been
dying to do that for years to make the anti tobacco groups reliant on
us for money.  And you let us tie your payments to sales, too!"  I
pointed at her.  "Your survival is completely dependent on our holding
on to our market share."

"That's "

"And what about the earth-shattering horrors of teen smoking?"  I said
with anger that really wasn't aimed at her anymore.  "Teen smoking
rates went down when we were running the Joe Camel ad campaign that
everyone was so freaked-out about.  We just used old Joe as a
bargaining chip.  Here's a news flash Ads don't get kids to smoke! Kids
smoke because it's forbidden to them and not to adults it's a way for
them to show they're grown-up.  And without even breathing hard, we got
you to completely ignore adult smoking, which is the foundation for
teen smoking.  Even better, we got you to demand huge penalties for
teen smoking when every study ever done suggests the higher the
penalties, the more kids smoke.  That's why when you say 'fifty-dollar
fine," we say 'thousand-dollar fine'!"

She was backed against the wall now, her jaw set like a cinder block.
I'd never seen those supernatural eyes of hers when there was something
serious going on behind them.  They were really bright.

Not bright enough to stop me, though.  "There's nothing we like better
than a morally outraged, holier-than-thou anti tobacco crusader.  You
can't buy that kind publicity ..."

"You don't think I know all this?"  she pretty much screamed.  "You
don't think I know that half the anti tobacco lobbyists out there are a
bunch of political hacks who put posturing and fund-raising before
results?  What do you think I'm doing at SY?  I'm trying to change
that!  I'm trying to Jo something!"

"Come on, Anne," I said, sliding off the counter.  "When are you going
to open your eyes and see that no one wants an end to smoking?  The
government gets their tax money, the lawyers get their fees, smokers
get a product they love, and the antismoking lobby gets a crusade to
feel superior about.  Everybody's happy."

"Until they start coughing up blood."

"Must have been worth it, though, or they wouldn't have done it, right?
They knew what was coming from the time they ripped the cellophane off
their first pack."  "It wasn't so worth it when my mom died.  She'd
listened to years of the industry saying smoking wasn't dangerous and
by the time she figured it out, she was addicted."

And that was the moment I should have offered to make her dinner and
walked away from this fight.  But for some reason I couldn't.  I don't
know where all the anger was coming from thirty years of swallowing it,
I guess.  But I wasn't going to let her get away with the "You murdered
my mom" thing.

"You know it's killing you, Anne.  It's smoke, for God's sake!  That's
why when your house catches on fire they don't tell you to stand tall
and take deep breaths."  I pulled a cigarette from my pocket, lit it,
and held it out.  "Ever try one?"

She grimaced.  "No!"

"Now's your chance, Anne.  Pretend you're living in nineteen fifty and
everybody's telling you these are good for you."  I walked over and
held the cigarette a few inches from her face.  "Now take a nice, deep
drag and see how healthy it feels."

She gave me an angry shove and I stumbled backward, slipping on some
flour and landing hard on the floor.

"You might be able to fool everyone else, Trevor.  But not me.  It's
not working anymore, is it?  All that denial and all that money you
handed SY hasn't made you feel one bit better about yourself."

There was a muffled crash that sounded like it came from the front of
the house, but she didn't notice.

"Anne "

"And now you're stuck right in the middle of everything.  How are you
going to hide from that?"

Nicotine, who had been enjoying the show, trotted off to see what was
up as I struggled to my feet.  I grabbed Anne, and she fought back
harder than someone her size should have been able to.

"Shhhhl" I whispered loudly.  "We've got to get out the back!  Someone
"

But it was too late.  Two men came running up the hall and before I
could do anything, one had grabbed Anne around the waist and pulled her
away from me.  I reached out and tried to get hold of her feet as they
kicked helplessly in the air.

"Sir!  Are you all right?"  one of the men said, stepping between us.

"Let me go!"  Anne screamed.

I echoed the sentiment.  "Let her go!"

To my surprise, he did.

Nicotine slipped back into the kitchen, and we all just looked at each
other.

Both men were dressed in stylish suits that had obviously been tailored
to fit smoothly over their well-developed muscles.  Their hair was
long, silky, and tied back in nearly identical ponytails the only
difference being that one had light hair and the other dark.  All in
all, they didn't fit the image of a couple of detoxing wackos.

"Who the hell are you guys?"  I finally managed to get out.  "And what
are you doing in my house?"

"We've been hired to protect you," Blonde said.  "We heard the shouting
and a crash ..."

Anne took a step back toward the archway that led out of the kitchen.
"You have storm troopers now?  My God ..."

Then she turned and ran out of the house, but not before giving me
another shove that again sent me to the floor.

"Are you all right, Mr.  Barnett?"  the blond one said, helping me to
my feet and dusting the flour off me.  "We're sorry if we frightened
you.  We'd hoped to have a more civil introduction, but when heard all
the commotion "

"Hired by who?"  I said, already knowing the answer.

"Paul Trainer."

I took a deep breath and let it out, turning off the oven and pushing
past them into the hall.  "I'm going to bed."

"We'd like to go over the house and talk to you about your schedule and
the comings and goings of your friends."

I patted my leg, and Nicotine fell into step behind me.

"I don't have any."

Twenty-Three.

I VIVIDLY REMEMBERED TAKING THE PHONE OFF THE

hook, so the incessant ringing had to be a dream.  I ignored it and it
finally stopped, only to start again a few seconds later.

Eventually, I reached for it and slid it beneath the covers to hide
from the powerful morning sunlight coming through the windows.

"WHAT?"

"Is this Trevor Barnett?"

I didn't recognize the voice.  "Why are you calling me at this hour? Do
you know what time it is?"

"Uh, yeah.  It's eleven o'clock."

"Oh."

"This is Gary Vandorn.  I'm with the New York Times."

I recognized the name.  Vandorn was an unrepentant, but not fanatical,
smoker who had been pretty evenhanded with the industry.  A generally
reasonable guy with credibility on both sides of the fence.

"I was hoping to get a response from you to Congressman Godfrey's
statement this morning."

"What statement?"

"That this is all just a ploy to put pressure on the American people
and that the tobacco industry is hell-bent on shirking its
responsibility to everyone it's harmed and that it's the government's
role to protect all the morons out there from big, bad corporations
like Terra.  You know the speech."

I scrunched down a little farther beneath the covers, trying to escape
what little light was managing to filter through.  As consciousness
started to get a firm grip on me, I started mentally replaying my fight
with Anne.  What the hell was wrong with me?  She'd walked through my
door wanting to believe that I was a knight in slightly tarnished
armor, and I'd completely blown it.  Thirty-two years of avoiding
confrontation and telling people what they wanted to hear, and I pick
that moment to melt down.

"Mr.  Barnett?  Are you still there?"

I was cursing myself for telling Anne that she was wasting her time at
SY until the rest of what I said started to come back to me.  Jesus...
the stuff about her mother ... "Mr.  Barnett?"

"What?"

"Still looking for a comment."

"You want a comment?  Okay, here's a comment.  I'm getting kind of
tired of all this political bullshit.  You know how much we make off a
pack of smokes?  A few lousy cents.  You know how much the government
makes?  As much as four bucks.  In fact, you could go so far as to say
that the sale of cigarettes is primarily a form of taxation and the
main purpose of tobacco companies is to collect those taxes.  For God's
sake, they've exempted us from practically every piece of public-safety
legislation ever enacted.  They spend millions subsidizing tobacco
farmers.  They divert state settlement money earmarked for
smoking-reduction programs into their slush funds.  And all the while
they stand there on TV and tell everybody what evil bastards we are. As
far as I'm concerned, Congressman Godfrey can kiss my ass."

There was a brief silence over the line.

"Can I quote you on that?"

From my position at the bottom of my bed, I could feel the industry's
stock plummeting, my hope of ever getting another dime out of my trust
disappearing, and my chance of keeping my rather confusing forty-five
thousand-dollar-a-year job from disintegrating.  And then there were
all the people out there fantasizing about shoving bamboo shoots under
my fingernails ... "Sure.  What the hell."

I slammed the phone back down and gave a little thought to my schedule.
I could get up, take a shower, and go to my big new office.  Or I could
just lie in bed all day.  The choice seemed clear.

I was in the process of reaching out to close the drapes when there was
a knock at the door.  I'd almost forgotten about my new bodyguards.

"Go away!"

It didn't work.  I watched the two men enter, followed closely by
Nicotine, who jumped up on the bed and tried to get at me with that
sloppy tongue of hers.

"Mr.  Trainer needs to see you," Blonde said.  I tried to remember if
they'd ever told me their real names.

"I'm sick.  I can't go in today."

Brunette walked into the bathroom, and a moment later I heard the
shower go on.

"Have some coffee.  It'll make you feel better," Blonde said, handing
me a cup.  He just stood there staring at me until I took a sip.

"Okay, we're going to leave you to it," Brunette said, reappearing from
the bathroom.  "We need to be in the car in twenty minutes."  His face
lost what little friendliness it was able to convey.  "Twenty minutes.
Are we clear?"

Historically, the progression of the protests taking place in front of
Terra's headquarters had been pretty predictable.  As the Montana
litigation dragged on and the blood in the water continued to embolden
the press and politicians, the demonstrations had grown in size,
intensity, and duration.  Not an ideal trend from an industry
perspective but, in a way, comfortable in its steady slowness.

So I was completely unprepared for what we were faced with when we
turned off the main road toward the Terra building.  Our thirty or
forty die-hard antismoking demonstrators were gone, replaced by
something like two hundred angry and jittery-looking people holding
signs that said things like choice!  and freedom!  We were forced to
slow to a crawl as we pulled up behind a line of cars trying to get
past a hastily erected police barricade.

We continued forward in fits and starts, listening to the angry,
unintelligible yelling that had replaced the dopey rhymes I'd become
used to.  The signs bristling from the crowd were surprisingly well
designed and professionally executed considering the short notice,
suggesting to me the involvement of Terra's marketing department.

It took about two more minutes for us to make contact with the
protestors and I mean this literally.  We had to use the car's bumper
to gently push them out of the way as we continued forward.  I lay down
in the backseat, covering my face and hoping that no one would
recognize me.  Obviously, my fear wasn't completely imagined because a
moment later the car's locks clicked down.

I tensed when I heard a knocking on the window, and I uncovered my face
enough to see what was going on.  A cop was standing at the driver's
window and Blonde held up a Terra employee badge for a moment before we
were waved on.  It seemed like an hour before the sun filling the car
faded to dim fluorescent light.  I sat up and gratefully took in the
relative silence and stillness of the parking garage.

Blonde pulled the vehicle to within a few feet of the elevator, and the
locks went up again.  "You have our cell number, right, Trevor?"

I nodded.

"Call us when you're about an hour from being ready to go home.  Don't
try to walk out of here on foot or accept a ride from one of your
co-workers, all right?  And from now on, you'll be eating in the
executive dining room only don't go out and pick something up and don't
order anything in."

I didn't ask about the takeout thing.  The implication seemed to be
that someone might want to poison me.  He was just being thorough,
though, right?  He didn't really think anyone would ... "Seems like
things are starting to go our way down there."

I'd gone directly into Paul Trainer's office, as directed.  He was
standing on his desk looking down at the crowded sidewalks below.  It
was the first time I'd ever seen him not wearing a jacket, and his
white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar with no tie.  Battle
dress.

"Passion!"  he shouted, not looking at me.  "People have been wondering
what the meaning of it all is ever since our pathetic species could put
together a rational thought..."

"The meaning of what?"

"Life," he said emphatically.  "Why we were put here."

He spun around on his desktop and stood there like he was onstage. "The
older I get the more I think that it's passion, plain and simple. We
were put here on earth to feel alive.  That's all."

I moved forward a few feet, and he looked down on me as he had on the
protestors.  "What do you feel, Trevor?"

I wasn't sure.  But whatever it was, it felt wrong as though someone
else's emotions had invaded my body and my system was having a hard
time fighting them off.

"Like a quarter of the population wants me dead," I said, finally.

"That just seems like a real 'glass is half empty' attitude, son."

"Are you suggesting that I focus on the fact that three-quarters
don't?"

"That's the spirit!"  He held out a hand, and I helped him down to the
floor.

"How about a raise, Trevor?  Would that cheer you up?"

"Excuse me?"

"How much do you want?  How much do you think you're worth as the
executive vice president of strategy?"

"Um ... A hundred thousand dollars?"

Trainer looked as though he was in pain.  "Jesus Christ.  Remember all
those people who want you dead?"

"Um, plus options and four weeks of vacation?"

"Why don't we just say two fifty a year and we'll work out a nice
benefits package for you over the next couple of days.  How's that
sound?"  He offered his hand as I tried to get my mind around the fact
that I was making a quarter of a million dollars a year.  I remembered
my conversation with Anne the night before and how I'd told her that
the tobacco industry loved funding the anti tobacco crusaders loved
making them reliant on tobacco dollars.  Now Trainer was trying to
latch me to the same teat.

I took his hand, and he pumped it energetically.  "Keep up the good
work," he said.  "There's more where that came from."

Despite its size, only the far corner of the room was being used.
That's where Senators Randal, Packer, and Wakely had my father pinned
against the wall.  If it had been an alley instead of Terra's richly
appointed boardroom, I'd have thought they were trying to steal his
watch.

The three turned threateningly as Trainer and I entered, and I tried
again to mimic my boss's serene expression.

"What the hell's going on, Paul ?  Why weren't we told anything about
this?"

Fred Randal was a peculiar-looking man with a truly grand head that
perched on his blocky shoulders like a geologic feature from a
Roadrunner cartoon.  Today, his coloring made that analogy even more
literal.

"Calm down, Fred.  Why don't y'all have a seat and we'll talk."

My father skirted the senators and took the seat to Trainer's left
since I'd already taken the one to his right.  We both wanted to be as
close as possible to his protective umbrella and as far as possible
from the politicians trying to stare us down.

"Have you seen the paper today?"  Trainer said, pointing to a New
York

Times sitting in the middle of the table.  No one made a move for it,
so I slid it toward me.

Gary Vandorn's article started out with a little history, an overview
of the industry's legal problems, and the ramifications of the Montana
suit.  Then it moved on to me the industry's new strategy guru and my
run-in with Scalia on TV.  Spin is an amazing thing.  Suddenly I found
myself transformed into the "honest, flesh-and-blood spokesman that the
industry has needed for a quarter of a century."  I read that part
three times, ignoring the heated conversation going on between Trainer
and the senators and wondering how my "kiss my ass" quote was going to
look in tomorrow's paper.

I noticed a thin file beneath the newspaper and flipped it open.  After
scanning its contents for a moment, I slammed it closed again and
shoved both it and the paper back to the center of the desk.

The folder contained copies of Vandorn's medical records, as well as a
summary of his smoking habits.  I refocused on what was happening in
the room and tried not speculate on how that information had found its
way to Terra's boardroom.

"Where is it you think this is going, Paul?"  Randal said.

"To a final decision on the smoking issue.  Will this industry continue
in the U.S. or will we move operations to a friendly foreign country
and operate solely in overseas markets?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's time we find out what the American people really want.  Every
year, public opinion turns more against us and the lawsuits get larger
and more sophisticated.  We're being bled.  It's time to stand and
fight.  Or die."

"Jesus Christ, Paul!"  Randal said, waving toward his silent
colleagues.  "We've supported you every step of the way.  We've done
everything possible to keep the government and the courts off your ass.
We deserved to be consulted on this."

Trainer seemed unimpressed but remained unfailingly polite.  "We ap
predate your support, Fred, but it hasn't done us a whole lot of good
lately, has it?"

Randal looked like he was coming to the end of his patience, and the
color of his big head deepened.  He slammed his palms down on the table
and leaned over them toward Trainer.  "You're fixing to put half the
people in the South our constituents out of work, not to mention the
retailers, wholesalers, advertisers, and everyone else who relies on
tobacco to put food on their tables."

And votes in his pocket, I thought.

"There isn't a retailer in this country with a single cigarette on
their shelves, and we're already hearing about packs going for as much
as thirty dollars.  What the hell's going to happen when people
completely run out?  Police departments all over the country are
already gearing up for a huge increase in violent crime.  Pretty soon,
you're not going to have a friend left in the world, Paul."

I found myself slowly scooting back in my chair, away from Trainer,
away from Randal, away from the file on the desk, and away from the
sixty million people who'd just been violently separated from their
drug of choice.

"Something you might not have thought about, Paul," my father said,
trying to end the staring cohcest going on between Trainer and Randal,
"is that we could be liable for any violence people want to argue was
the result of not being able to purchase tobacco products: domestic,
workplace, road rage you name it.  They'll take the position that we
knowingly addicted people to cigarettes and then cut them off for our
own purposes."

Trainer shrugged.  "Then we'll have five thousand suits against us
instead of three thousand."

"Goddamnit, Paul!"  Randal shouted.  "You can't just drop a bomb like
this!  Not now!"

"I can't think of a better time."

I'm not a particularly political person in fact, I've never voted in my
life.  So it hadn't registered with me that elections were coming up.
Combine that with the sluggish economy and the government's reliance on
tobacco money, and there were going to be a lot of people with their
backs against the wall.  A lot of very dangerous, very powerful people
with their backs against the wall.

Senator Packer, a surprisingly soft-spoken and moderate man (for a
southern politician), put a hand on his colleague's shoulder and gently
pulled him back from the table.

"Look, Paul," he said.  "I think we all agree that we're not going to
resolve this in the next couple of hours.  What we need to do, though,
is get some of our people back to work.  What about exports?  That
doesn't have anything to do with your legal problems here.  Why not
keep the manufacturing and distribution machine going for exportation
?"

Trainer didn't say anything but obviously wasn't interested.
Politicians were in the business of compromise, but CEOs weren't.  I'd
spent probably too much time thinking about all the people cut off from
their cigarettes, but I hadn't yet sat down and considered the
incredible economic and political impact of all this.  The scale of it
was almost too large to for me to comprehend.

The door to the boardroom swung open, and I wouldn't have been
surprised to see the president of the United States, an angry mob, or
an assassination squad walk through.  I was surprised, though, to see a
politely smiling Anne Kimball sashay in with a tray of sugar-coated
doughnuts and coffee.

Trainer stood, as was his custom when a lady entered the room.  "This
is Anne Kimball, Trevor's new assistant," he said.  Everyone in the
room was shamed into mumbling a polite greeting.

She slid the tray onto the table and looked directly at me.  "Your
favorite."

I just sat there like an idiot, trying to see if it was possible to let
my mouth hang open any wider.

She turned to Trainer.  "Is there anything else I can get for you?"

"No thank you, Anne.  I think we can manage"

I watched her disappear through the door as Trainer poured himself a
cup of coffee and helped himself to a doughnut.

"The smokers are organizing pretty fast," he said.  "Including a bunch
of actors and musicians who've been receptive to the freedom theme
we're going to go with."

Randal tried to say something, but Trainer held up a sugary hand.

"The antismoking lobby has pretty much blown itself apart over the last
twenty-four hours we've made it clear that we're not going to make our
annual settlement payment that's due next week, and they're scrambling
to figure out how they're going to keep their lights on."  He glanced
over at me.  "Also, I understand Angus Scalia's trapped in his house by
a bunch of protestors calling him a fascist.  A nice mouthful of his
own medicine, don't you think?"  He focused on Randal again.  "And as
for non-smokers, well, the majority of nonsmokers don't support taking
away the rights of adults.  So, I'd say to you, Fred, that I'm not the
only one twisting in the wind here.  On this issue the political
establishment has gone from not having an enemy in the world to not
having a friend in the world.  I think you'll find it's an
uncomfortable position to be in."

"Is that a threat, Paul?"

"Not at all.  This is going to be a difficult time for all of us, but I
want to stress that we're in it together and that all we're looking for
is an equitable and permanent solution.  We want people to understand
the dangers of smoking and to take responsibility for their actions.
It's not too much to ask."

"Reopen the factories and get distribution moving again, Paul," Randal
said.  "You've woken the people in Washington up.  Let us go and see
what we can do."

"I think they can be even more awake.  We're going to force everyone to
take a public position on this, Fred.  No more political bullshit
people are either going to be with us or against us."

"Congress would've strung you up twenty years ago if it weren't for
us!"  Randal shouted.  "No one's in your corner anymore, Paul.  Not
smokers, not nonsmokers, not your employees, not Congress, not the
president.  We're all you've got left all that's standing between you
and them."

"The decision's been made."

"Don't fuck with us, Trainer!"

Randal screamed this a piercing whine that I'm guessing could be heard
throughout the floor.

When Trainer's only reaction was an irritated frown, the three senators
just turned and stalked out the door.

"Trevor," Trainer said when they were gone, "could you have somebody
send each of them a van load of cigarettes?  I'm guessing that before
long a few smokes are going to go a long way toward getting things
done."

"Should I include some nylons and chewing gum?"

He laughed and actually slapped his knee.  "Son, you crack me up."

By THE TIME I emerged from the boardroom, Anne had pretty much settled
into the complex system of desks, file cabinets, and computers outside
my office.  There was a little pillow tied to the chair for extra
lumbar support, a Boston Celtics coffee mug, and a tasteful but obvious
thank

YOU FOR NOT SMOKING Sign.

"What are you doing, Anne ?"

"You offered me a job.  The position's still open, isn't it?"

"I don't know.  Why do you want it?"

"Because you asked for help, and I was wrong to say no.  Because maybe
I don't have as many answers as I think I do.  Because maybe there are
some things to accomplish here."

"I don't know if I believe you."

"That's smart.  A man in your position should be careful who he trusts.
Now, do I get the job or not?"

I still wasn't convinced that she wasn't there to sabotage me for the
things I'd said the night before, but she seemed uniquely qualified for
the job for one compelling reason: I was still in love with her.

"I honestly don't know how much the position pays," I said, starting
toward my office.  "I "

"Trying to make me even more the tobacco industry's bitch?"

I resisted looking around to see if anyone had heard, and turned back
to her instead.  "Come on, Anne.  I never said that.  And the things I
did say, I "

"I've got some money saved.  I don't want anything."

I walked back up to her desk so I could speak more quietly.  "Come on,
Anne, you can't blow through your life savings over this.  If you don't
want Terra's money, why don't you just call this undercover work and
stay on SY's payroll?  I could "

"I got laid off."

"Laid off?  Why?"

"What do you mean 'why'?  Because of you, Trevor.  The tobacco
companies waited until the last possible moment to tell us they weren't
going to make the settlement payment they promised.  John's having to
cut loose nearly everyone."

Twenty-Four.

There was almost nothing in my new office that was mine.  I'd tried
sitting on the former resident demon's couch, then behind the former
resident demon's desk, then on a chair by the former resident demon's
fireplace, but I just couldn't get comfortable.  Whether it was because
I felt like he was watching me from wherever people like him like us
went after we died or because of the brief, malevolent glares I'd
gotten from the Senators Three, or if it was the way the press was so
tightly linking me to this thing, I wasn't sure.

I ended up sitting on the thick carpet, leaning my back against an
enormous potted tree and staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows. From
my position, I could only see hazy gray sky, and I let the illusion
that there was nothing else take over for a while.

I honestly don't know how long I sat like that.  I would have liked to
| have had a way to keep myself busy, but I still didn't know what it
was I did.  Exactly what Paul Trainer said, I guess.

"Hiding?  Smart."

I jumped to my feet, miraculously avoiding getting tangled in the
tree's delicate branches, and watched my father close the door behind
him.  He walked over to a sideboard and poured himself a drink from a
decanter I'd never noticed before.

"What do you want?"  I said.

"I'm Terra's general counsel and you're the EVP-strategy.  I'm here to
talk about the future of the company.  We do things like that on this
floor."

He sat down in the conversation pit and I did the same, though
reluctantly.  It seemed unlikely that my father had any interest in my
opinions or analyses.  But for some reason, I had access to Paul
Trainer and that made me a force to be reckoned with.

"What did you think of that meeting, Trevor?"

"I don't know.  It would have been nice if it had gone smoother.  But
under the circumstances, I'm not sure it could have."

My father displayed an easygoing smile that he must have only just
learned.  "Maybe if Paul had let those guys know what he was going to
do instead of lumping them in with everyone else and blind siding them
.. ."

I nodded.  "On the other hand, if they'd known and the press found out,
they could have been painted as having something to do with it.  This
way they're clean."

My father seemed confused for a moment.  He'd never noticed that I
occasionally said things that weren't completely stupid because he'd
spent his life either talking over me or formulating his next sentence
while I was speaking.

"Randal called me from his car, Trevor.  He's coming unglued and so are
the others.  I'm not just talking about Packer and Wakely, here.  I'm
talking about pretty much every elected official in America."

"I don't think Paul expected them to be happy."

My father looked down at his glass and turned it thoughtfully in his
hand.  "Be careful, son.  I know that Paul's a very charismatic man ...
But he's also incredibly arrogant.  And sometimes that arrogance gets
in the way of his judgment.  I guess what I'm saying is, don't put too
much faith in him."

Son?

I was trying as hard as I could to convince myself that my father was
concerned about me, but I couldn't quite make the leap.  It was ironic
that he'd spent most of his life ignoring me but remained one of the
most important formative force in my life.  Somewhere down the line,
I'd recognized that I only got attention from him when I failed at
sports, at school, at love whatever.  And because of that, I'd stopped
trying.  It had proven to be a hard habit to break.

The truth that I'd never had any reason to face was that Dad wanted me
to fail and encouraged it at every opportunity.  Anything he could do
to keep me from replacing Grandad's big, handsome, dead jocks, he'd do.
Of course, Grandad had joined the sons he'd loved so much years ago
but, like I said, habits are hard to break.

"Paul's the CEO," I said.  "What he does or doesn't do isn't really any
of my business."

My father laughed a heaving of his chest with no real sound.  "It has
everything to do with you, Trevor.  All this happened right after you
took the EVP job.  Your face is the one on TV every night..."

I shrugged.

"Wake up, son.  Everyone in the country thinks this is your doing."

His tone was calculated to make it clear that he considered the idea
that I could in any way be involved in the orchestration of something
like this absurd.  Which, of course, it was.

"It doesn't matter if it's true or not," he continued.  "It's
perception that counts.  There's been talk over the last year about him
getting old, losing his edge.  Maybe even getting a little senile.  Now
it's looking to a lot of people like he's come under the sway of a
younger man.  And frankly, he's not doing anything to stop that kind of
talk."

"What are you trying to say, Dad?"

"Why pick you to make the announcement?"  he said.  "Because you're a
good-looking, likeable guy who doesn't come off as polished.  Because
you got some good press about being honest and unguarded in that
disaster of a debate you had with Scalia.  But mainly because he wants
someone else's face on this thing."

Nothing my father was saying was untrue.  The idea that Paul Trainer
had my best interests at heart was no less laughable than the idea that
my father had my best interests at heart.  It was getting harder and
harder to forget, though, that I was the executive vice president of
one of the largest companies in the world.  Me.

"Right now, every smoker in America is connecting you with the fact
that they can't have a cigarette and every politician in America is
connecting you with the fact that a quarter of their voters are going
to be going through withdrawal come election day."  He continued to
spin his glass in his hand.  "I know that after working downstairs,
this must be amazing for you.  But Trainer's just using you.  And
you're going to end up the worse for it."

"Am I?"

"Look, Trevor, the government isn't going to put up with this.
Politicians are a vindictive bunch, and they can't be blackmailed as
easily as you think.  When they all get together on one side, they're
unstoppable.  They can make you and Trainer into the most hated people
in the world; they can trump up a way to put you in jail; they can dig
up every embarrassing thing you've ever done ..."

I wasn't sure I agreed.  With the kind of media scrutiny we were under,
it would be hard for them to trump anything up, and one of the benefits
of having not done much with my life was that I hadn't really done
anything all that bad.  This wasn't something as simple as a UPS strike
over Christmas.  The government couldn't just step in, get everyone
back to work, and save the day.  Most of them were on record as being
against smoking and had grandstanded hard and often about the evils of
tobacco.  It seemed far more likely that the government's approach
would be to remain paralyzed and hope the industry lost its resolve in
the next week or two.

"The smokers are going to turn against us, Trevor, and so are the
people who are out of work or losing money because of this.  The
government will paint us as divisive and heartless at every turn, and
now we can't even count on the local politicians to do anything to help
us."

Maybe, I thought.  But we had a fairly powerful spin machine, too.

"What about the suits?"  I asked, deciding it was time for a change of
subject.

There was a flash of anger that someone who hadn't grown up with my
father would have completely missed.  Obviously, the EVP-strategy
questioning the general counsel wasn't something they did on this
floor.

"We were managing those and keeping stock from crashing something I
can't say about your strategy."

There was no denying that every time I opened my mouth hundreds of
millions of dollars disappeared.

"The board is going along with this in hopes of a long-term solution
but they're scared, Trevor.  They've lost a great deal of money.  And
so have we."

I hadn't had the heart to look at the value of my trust since I'd made
the announcement.  My life was weird and depressing enough right now
without going looking for bad news.

"What do you want from me, Dad?"

"I want you to think about what you stand to gain and what you stand to
lose from all this.  I want you to think about whether it's worth the
risk you're taking."

I RETREATED beneath the tree again after my father left, this time with
the decanter.  After two full glasses of scotch, I didn't feel any more
settled.  In fact, I felt worse.

The bottom line was that, whatever his motivation, Dad was right.  What
was I getting out of this?  Another couple of hundred grand a year, of
course, but that was pretty much theoretical.  Realistically, how long
was I going to last in this job?  Long enough to get my hands on one or
two swollen paychecks before, one way or another, I was out?

"Trevor?  Are you in here?  It's seven o'clock."

I peeked through the branches and saw Anne standing in the doorway.

"What are you doing down there?"  she said, closing the door behind
her.

"Thinking."

""Bout what?"  She pulled the chair out from behind my desk and sat,
looking down at me.

"Why are you here, Anne?  Seriously, tell me."

"I already did."

"This industry's older than the country.  You can't destroy it from the
inside any more than you can from the outside.  It's immortal.
Inevitable.  Omnipotent."

She leaned forward and tapped my shoulder with fingers free of tobacco
stains.  "We'll see."

Twenty-Five.

I DUCKED DOWN BEHIND THE SEATS AS WE ROUNDED

the corner, contorting myself into a position that was becoming a
little too familiar.  My new bodyguards managed to ignore nearly all
the subdivision's traffic laws at once as they scanned the quiet
streets for any reporters or zombies who might be lying in wait.  I'd
seen on the news that the makers of nicotine patches were running three
shifts a day to keep up with demand.  Hopefully that would keep the
relevant quarter of the population too blitzed to plan an effective
ambush.

And what about my own smoking habit?  Not surprisingly, cartons were
still plentiful on the executive floor, which I now accessed from the
security of a richly appointed private elevator.  Honestly, though, it
was more of an odd compulsion for me than a habit.  I'd never smoked
more than a half a pack a day in my life and now I was down to about a
third of that.  Obviously, I had some catching up to do.

Brunette jumped out of the suicide seat and monitored the opening of my
garage from the lawn.  Blonde didn't flip the locks up until the garage
door was safely closed behind us.

"Where's Nicotine?"  I said as we mounted what felt like a commando
raid on my mudroom.  She always greeted me at the door.

"Second floor."

I tried to turn toward the stairs, but Brunette stuck a thick arm out
and blocked my path.  I found myself being herded down the hall,
sandwiched between them.

"Uh, guys, I want to "

"Shhhh," Blonde hissed as he pushed open the door to my den and
entered.  I felt a little push from Brunette and followed obediently.

""Evening, Trevor."

Paul Trainer was sitting in my chair wearing one of those blue masks
that you fill with hot water for a purpose that I couldn't remember.
His head was tilted way back, as though he was concentrating on the
ceiling, and his hands were folded neatly in his lap.  A
weathered-looking man with a utilitarian haircut and a macho build
similar to my bodyguards' was sitting on my desk.

"How was the rest of your day?"  Trainer lifted his head off the back
of the chair and focused on me through the puffy slits in the mask.  He
looked like one of those aging actors who opened shopping malls dressed
like the Lone Ranger.

"It was fine," I said, suddenly wondering if he'd overheard my
conversation with my father.  I tried to replay it in my mind and
concluded that I had been characteristically noncommittal.  My father
had been the offender.

Blonde and Brunette took up positions behind Trainer, suddenly looking
at me as though I was a potential threat.

"Why do you always look so goddamn worried?  Have you ever had a
moment's fun in your whole life?"

He seemed to want an answer.

"I don't know, Paul."

"Jesus Christ!  I just gave you a huge raise and made you the
number-two man at one of the biggest companies in the world.  Over the
next couple of weeks we're going to kick every hypocritical son of a
bitch in the country right in the nuts and probably get your trust
paying out again in the process.  What the hell more do you want?  A
get-into-heaven-free card?"

It occurred to me that if you reversed the spin on that speech, it
would sound more like this: Jesus Christ!  I just gave you enough money
to enslave three people twice as smart as you, I've made you the
figurehead for corporate evil, and over the next couple of weeks I'm
going to hide behind you while we figure out whether or not this is a
suicide mission.  What more do you want?  A get-out-of-hell-free
card?

"There you go again!"  Trainer said, pointing to the expression I
hadn't had the good sense to hide.  "Are you thinking that you're never
going to get your face painted on the side of a church?  Never concern
yourself with things that don't matter, son.  That's lesson one."

He jumped up with the creaking bones and boundless energy of a nursing
home escapee on amphetamines.

"Can you feel them out there?"  he said, grabbing me by the shoulders
and spinning me around toward the curtained window.  "They're
panicking."

"Who?"

"All of'em.  Those assholes we met with today are terrified that
they're going to get voted out come Election Day.  Our employees are
terrified that they're not going to be able to feed their kids.  The
state governors are terrified that they aren't going to be able to pay
their schoolteachers without their tax and settlement dollars.  The
anti tobacco lobby are terrified that they're going to have to close
their doors and find real jobs.  The Fed chairman's terrified that
pulling the plug on cigarettes is going to push us into a recession.
And you did that, Trevor.  You made it happen."

He squeezed my shoulders a little tighter in those cold, bony hands of
his.  If it was true that power is the best aphrodisiac, he was going
to start humping my leg any minute.

"Do you know what the president is saying?"

"President of what?"  I said, stupidly.

"Of the United States, boy!"

"No."

"Nothing!  He's not saying anything.  You've paralyzed him with fear.

And that fat bastard Angus Scalia is hiding under his bed while he gets
picketed and smeared all over the television."

I squinted, trying to visualize the cowering hordes just on the other
side of my curtains.

"So you agree with Senator Randal?"  I said when it became clear that
my mind couldn't conjure up the image.

"What?"  he said, releasing me.

I turned toward him.  "You agree with Senator Randal that we don't have
a friend in the world.  As your head of strategy, I have to wonder if
this is a good one.  I assume you're trying to strong-arm the
government into outlawing suits against the tobacco industry, but I
can't think of anyone who really benefits from that even you.  It seems
unlikely that the suits will put us out of business before it's time
for you to retire Montana or no Montana."

Trainer glanced at my bodyguards.  "I told you he was a smart kid; that
we had to keep him safe.  You dive in front of a bullet for this
one."

Their nods were depressingly noncommittal.

Trainer sat down in my chair again, a good part of his energy spent.
"Hell, you got it all backwards.  Everybody benefits.  Our shareholders
and employees get a solid industry and the respect they deserve, the
government gets to put this issue behind it once and for all and
continue to collect billions in taxes from us.  The court system stops
getting clogged up with nonsense.  Smokers continue to be free to make
choices about their lives without government interference, the zealots
get to keep their crusade ..."

"Some of those benefits seem a little suspect, Paul.  And a lot of them
have kind of a long-term feel.  People work in the short term they tend
to see what's in front of them, not what's over the next hill."

He nodded thoughtfully.  "That you're right about.  We need to make
people see that this is the right thing.  We need to start making some
friends."

"Easier said than done."

He crossed his legs and smiled.  "Maybe.  Maybe not."

Twenty-Six.

The sun had just set and the deep red of the horizon dramatically
backlit the crane jutting up over Darius's house.  The mannequin and
sandbag hanging from it suggested that it was still in testing but
would soon be fully operational.

I jogged across the damp lawn with my swimsuit in my back pocket,
feeling the superficial calm I'd been seeking start to take hold.  What
I needed right now was to inject a little familiarity back into my
life, and this seemed like the place to do it.  My relationship with
Darius was, perhaps sadly, the most stable in my life.  He and I had
been friends for twenty-three years now, and I'd spent more of my
sentient life with him than with any other single human being in the
world.

So I'd decided it would be best to spend this typically hot evening
striking out with women, drinking pifia coladas, and listening to
Darius's undoubtedly unique perspective on the strange predicament I
suddenly found myself in.  It was my experience that after a few
umbrella drinks, there was no problem that didn't briefly appear to be
solved.

When I stepped through the open doors of the house and into the
enormous room at its center, something felt different.  What it was,
though, I couldn't immediately identify.  Light was still provided by
the glare of a disco ball, music was still too loud and bass too chest
thumbing, revelers seemed typically sweaty, frantic, and off balance
... I skirted along the wall, giving the chaos on the dance floor a
wide berth as I headed for the rear exit.  About halfway through, I
found my path blocked by a small, oddly motionless group of people who
appeared to be concentrating on some unseen object.  Curious and still
nagged by what it was that felt so unfamiliar, I spied on them as I
squeezed past.

It was a cigarette.

I slowed some, but no one would meet my eye.  Obviously, they were
afraid that I'd ask to join them in passing and carefully dragging on
that sad, lonely little butt.

I looked up at a ceiling that had always been obscured by a heavy haze
of smoke and took a deep breath of the relatively clean air.  It was
the first time I'd actually witnessed a tangible effect of the things
Paul Trainer (and I?) had done.  Kind of weird.

Outside, twenty or thirty people were milling around in the light of
the fading sky, drinking and talking.  I weaved through them to the
pool house, stripped off my clothes, stuffed them in my personal
locker, and headed back out in my swimsuit.

I went straight for the thatch-and-bamboo self-service bar Darius
recently had built and ducked under the low-hanging roof.  There were
two pretty girls in bikinis sitting in front of it, talking and
drinking strawberry margaritas.  They looked good, so I filled a
stainless-steel blender with ice and strawberries and hit the Crush
button.  When I glanced up, both girls were staring at me.  I couldn't
remember meeting either one, but that wasn't a surprise Darius's
company seemed to have an entire division dedicated to hiring and
firing girls just like these.

"Can I freshen those?"  I said, pointing to their glasses.  The sound
of my voice broke them from their daze.

"Uh, no.  No.  Thanks.  We're good."

I shrugged and grabbed a bottle of Cuervo, hesitating for a moment
before tilting the bottle over the blender.  Would I be better off
tomorrow with a clear head or deadened senses?  I decided to start down
the path of deadened senses and see how things went.

"You sure?"  I said, pouring.

The girls responded by getting up and retreating toward the house.  I
watched their smooth, thin bodies recede, a little confused.  Because
of what I looked like, most women's default position was to show at
least a glimmer of interest in casual conversation.

Despite my complete sobriety at this point, it took another few minutes
of mixing fruit, ice, and booze for it to occur to me that they
probably recognized me from TV.  Apparently, America's obsession with
celebrity didn't extend to radical tobacco industry spokesmen.

I tested, sipped, and modified for a few more minutes, making a
margarita of such perfection that those girls would forever regret not
sharing it with me.  I was carefully pouring my masterpiece into a
plastic cup when Darius walked up.

"What are you doing here, Trevor?  Figured you'd be too busy to slum
with us."

His billowy linen shirt was half untucked from expensive slacks, and
his hair fell a little too haphazardly around his shoulders.

"Your fly's unzipped."

He looked down, clearly irritated, and remedied the situation.

"Don't tell me you need a drink, Darius.  I thought you were completely
self-contained up there."

Nearly the entire top floor of Sinsimian was devoted to a large bedroom
constructed solely for the entertainment of young ladies.  To my
knowledge no male other than Darius had so much as laid eyes on it
since its completion, though not for lack of trying.  Back before I
lost interest in trying to figure out a way to break in, the door had
been protected by a seemingly foolproof punch-pad-activated lock. Rumor
had it and I had no reason to doubt the veracity of these accounts it
was now protected by a retinal scanner obtained from a security company
that did work for the CIA.

"Martini, right?  Shaken not stirred?"

"What the hell's going on, Trevor?  What's this crap with the cigarette
supply?"

I rolled my eyes.

"Look, Trev, I know you don't have the juice to do something like this
but the TV and papers are saying you're the man.  I mean, where did all
this come from?  I thought you were a fucking file clerk."

I stared down at my margarita and used my finger to jab at an ice cube
that had escaped the blender's blades.

"I honestly have no idea what's going on, man.  The whole thing kind of
came from outer space.  I mean, I thought I was getting fired.  I went
into this board meeting and "

"Let's walk," he said, stepping around the bar and throwing an arm
around me.

"You sure you don't want anything?"  I asked as he led me out onto the
concrete deck surrounding the pool.

"No, man.  I'm good."

"Looks like you've almost got the crane working," I said, pointing.  He
continued to concentrate on the ground.

"Yeah.  Look, do you have any idea how many people smoke?  I mean, how
many times have you partied here?  I'll bet eighty percent of the
chicks who come here like to smoke when they drink."

I nodded and watched a girl obviously a first timer trying to figure
out the best way to get into Darius's star-shaped pool.

"They're kind of freaked, Trevor."

I grinned and shook my head playfully.  "Afraid one of your girlfriends
is going to go postal and shoot up your office?"

"That's not funny, man."  The anger in his voice surprised me.  For a
moment, I thought he was just screwing with me.

"When chicks can't get what they want, they don't have as good a time,
you know?"

"I guess," I said, noticing that our trajectory was taking us toward
the pool house.

"And if they're not happy, they're not as fun."

In hindsight, the fact that he wasn't speaking in his trademark three
word sentences should have told me that this was a deadly serious
issue.  In my defense, though, we'd been friends for twenty-three
years.  Let me repeat that: twenty-three years.  He'd known the girls
at this party for something like ten minutes.

Darius jerked to a stop and since his arm was still around me, I did
too.

"The thing is, Trevor, you're all over the fucking TV."  I opened my
mouth to protest, but he held a hand up and silenced me.  "Now, I know
you aren't responsible for this stuff, but it's kind of hard to explain
to the girls, you know?  I mean, not only have they had their smokes
taken away, but now they've got the guy who did it walking around with
a daiquiri rubbing their faces in it."

"This is a margarita ..."

We started moving again, and I found myself being led into the pool
house.  We didn't stop until we were in front of my locker.

"Look, man, I'm thinking that maybe you shouldn't hang around here so
much until this thing shakes out, okay?"

Now, I know I should have seen that statement coming.  I mean, we were
standing in front of my locker for God's sake.  But and I don't want to
belabor the point we'd been friends for twenty-three years.  So, I was
still a little confused as to his point, even though it would have been
clear to a head of cabbage.

"I don't really hang around here much," I said slowly.  "Maybe a couple
of times a month ..."

"Yeah," he said, opening my locker and grabbing my clothes.

I then found myself being pulled back outside and toward the gate that
led to his front yard.  Finally, my mind started to process what was
happening and I stopped short.

"Darius.  Are you kicking me out of your house?"

"For Christ's sake, Trevor.  Don't be so goddamn melodramatic.  You're
freaking people out right now, that's all.  Just let things cool down
for a little while.  I've got a company to run, and people come here to
blow off steam.  That's what keeps them happy and working, right?"

I couldn't remember him ever expressing any interest in his employees
before.  Other than his interest in field-testing every
under-twenty-five-year-old girl on the payroll.

His arm tightened around my shoulders again, and I found myself without
the strength to resist.

"Darius.  I "

We stopped again at the front gate, and his face lit up as though he'd
just had a bolt of inspiration.

"Hey, man.  What about hooking me up?"

"Huh?"

He threw the gate open wide.  "Oh, come on.  You've got access to
smokes, right?  Maybe you could get me some.  You know, under the
table.  How cool would that be?  This'd be the only place you could
smoke 'em.  That'd get everybody going again."

He shoved my clothes into my stomach and me out into the uncaring
world.  I just stood there, clutching my underwear in one hand and a
half-empty margarita in the other.

"Hey," he said, closing the gate, "maybe we can get together next week
go out to lunch or something.  I'll talk to my assistant and see what
my schedule is."

"Uh, okay," I said, still standing there like a complete cretin.

He started back toward the house and back to the girl who was
undoubtedly flung across the bed in his playroom, but craned his neck
to look back at me before he disappeared.  "Keep me posted on those
smokes.  You'd really be helping me out."

Twenty-Seven.

, "Look, I'm serious.  Pull the car over!"

This time they did.

I jumped out before the vehicle came to a complete stop and used the
momentum to carry me through the dense bushes at the highway's edge.  I
made it about twenty yards before falling to my knees and vomiting.
Profusely.

When my Egg McMuffin, large Coke, and hash browns had been completely
purged, I struggled to my feet and walked another twenty feet away from
the road.  The farther I got from the asphalt, the cooler it was, and I
could feel the sweat beginning to dry against my skin.

The margarita at Sinsimian had been only the beginning of a long and
depressing evening.  I'd made Blonde and Brunette stop at some empty
dive bar on the way home, and there I'd gotten into some serious beer
and frozen pizza.  While I couldn't remember exactly what I'd thought
about sitting there alone in that tattered booth, I was sure it was
serious stuff.  The meaning of life.  Man's inhumanity to man.  You get
the idea.

My bodyguards, who had taken a booth with a better view of the door,
finally cut me off around midnight.  A few hours too late, it seemed.

I stumbled forward a few more feet and considered making a run for it.
If I went far enough, I'd eventually find a hotel where I could take a
freezing-cold shower, pull the curtains, crawl in bed .. .

Eventually, I began bushwhacking back toward the road, giving my
breakfast a wide berth.  When I hit the pavement, I waved Brunette out
of the front seat and took his place, hoping that a clear view and
unobstructed access to the air conditioner would help keep my nausea at
a manageable level.

In THE HALF hour it took to arrive at the cigarette factory that was
our destination, I'd managed to pull it together a little.  The frigid
interior of the car had dried my face and given it a little color, and
a half a pack of Life Savers had erased any evidence of our last
stop.

The parking lot was full, forcing us to take a circuitous route through
it, but the factory itself looked completely abandoned all dark windows
and locked doors.  By the time Blonde bounced my SUV over the curb and
started through the grass alongside the building, I was starting to
wonder about all those cars.

I was there to meet with a team of low-level operations managers and
personally evangelize Trainer's vision of Big Tobacco as a stable,
universally popular industry.  He'd painted a fairly benign picture of
the day: a friendly discussion in which I would convince our liaisons
to the common worker that the benefits of this strategy were well worth
the few weeks of discomfort that they would have to endure.  Then a
nice lunch.

I figured out that I'd been duped again when we cleared the building
and I saw hundreds of people milling around on the slope between a
muddy riverbank and a hastily constructed, but as yet unoccupied,
podium.

"What's going on?"  I said, clasping the dashboard and leaning into the
windshield.  The crowd consisted mostly of men wearing baseball caps
with macho logos and women trying to keep control of roving children.
It suddenly seemed certain that these were the people who actually
worked in this factory.  Or, more precisely, who had worked in this
factory, before Trainer and I laid them off.

"Turn the car around!"

My bodyguards pretended not to hear.

"I'm serious!  I didn't agree to this!  Turn the car around!"

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and Brunette leaned up between the seats.
"Relax, Trevor.  We've got your back."

I shoved his hand away.  "I don't care if you have my back!  What the
hell does that even mean?  Turn the car around!"

We stopped, and for a moment I thought I'd talked some sense into them.
Then Brunette got out and opened my door before I could snap the lock
back down.  I pointed to a man running toward us, expecting them to
tackle him and twist him up in some horribly uncomfortable position,
but they just let him by.

"Mr.  Barnett!  I'm Ken Ewing, the manager of this facility.  It's
wonderful to meet you!  I'm so glad you could find the time to come
here personally."

I shook his hand but didn't get out of the car.  If Ewing thought it
was odd when Brunette dragged me from the vehicle, he didn't show it.

"Ken, I was told that I was going to meet with you and a few of your
colleagues," I said as we were marched toward the podium.  "Then we
were going to have lunch .. ."

"I know, sir.  I thought the same thing.  Word came in just yesterday
morning of the change."

"Yesterday morning?"  I said.  "From who?"

"It came directly from Mr.  Trainer's office.  He said that you wanted
to talk to everyone that we were all in this together: management and
labor alike."

There was no more than fifty feet separating us from the front edge of
the crowd, and I tried not to look.  "I'm not sure this is such "

"Apparently, there were some last-minute changes to your speech and
it's being faxed over," Ewing interrupted.  "We should have it any
minute."

I was more or less pushed up the stairs onto the podium and Blonde
stayed within grabbing distance of me while Brunette stood on the grass
below, scanning the approaching crowd through dark sunglasses.

As I watched the loosely gathered people compact themselves into
something that looked suspiciously like a mob, I couldn't help
remembering a bumper sticker I saw on one of the trucks out front.

YOU CAN HAVE MY GUN WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS.

"You know .. . It's Ken, right?"  I said, starting to back toward the
stairs, my car, and safety.  "Ken, I think Mr.  Trainer made a
mistake."  Blonde moved to a blocking position with a self-conscious
casualness that proved I was a prisoner.

"There she is!"  Ewing" said, pointing to a woman rushing from the
empty manufacturing plant.  She was a little out of breath when she
reached us but managed to hold out the thin stack of paper in her hand.
Ewing backed away from it like it was radioactive and nodded in my
direction.

I stepped out from the shadow of the podium's backdrop, suddenly
realizing how hot it was in the afternoon sun.  My watch said that we
were almost an hour late, which meant my audience and their kids had
been standing out in this heat even longer.  That ought to put them in
a good mood just another example of management's disrespect for the
working man.

I looked out over their rock-hard faces and decided that my father was
probably right: Paul Trainer was trying to martyr me to the cause.  Any
minute now, someone out there with a mortgage, a kid in college, and a
sick mother-in-law was going to take out a gun and shoot me.  My mom
would watch my assassination on her big-screen, high-definition TV,
crinkle up her mildly sedated brow, and drop another Valium.  My father
would have the maid tape it, then never get around to watching it. Anne
would shrug.  Darius would throw a party in my honor and use his
feigned grief to get chicks.

"I want to apologize for being late," I said into the microphone.  "We
kind of underestimated how long it would take to drive here."

An angry man with skin the texture of dried lava and an inevitable CAT
Diesel Power baseball cap reached into his jacket, and I hit the
deck.

No, I don't mean that I winced and backed up a step, or that I ducked
my head involuntarily.  I mean I threw myself to the ground behind the
lectern.  And from my position there, I watched him raise his bushy
eyebrows and pull out a pair of sunglasses.

You can believe me when I tell you it's kind of hard to play something
like that off.  I stood back up, dusted off my slacks, and said,
"Sorry, dropped my speech."

As a confused murmur rumbled through the crowd, it occurred to me that
not a single thing I'd said so far was true.  When had I become such a
liar?

"Actually, I had too much to drink last night and I had to stop to
throw up.  They told me that I was meeting with a few people from
management I had no idea you guys were standing out here in the heat or
I would have just rolled down the window."  I didn't bother to look up
at the reaction, instead centering the faxed speech in front of me and
squinting through the glare.

"I speak for Terra's management when I tell you that we're sorry we had
to spring all this on you without any warning we wish we could have
given some notice so you could have been prepared, but it just wasn't
possible."  I glanced up but found it made me more nervous.  On the
bright side, it turns out that adrenaline is good for a hangover.

"As y'all know," I read, "the government's been chipping away at the
freedom of Americans for years now.  It's getting hard to remember a
time when there weren't a hundred people constantly running around
trying to make laws to stop us from driving with our dogs in the backs
of our trucks, or to block our legal right to own guns.  A time when we
could decide the way we wanted to live our private lives without
interference of the courts or a bunch of politicians in Washington ..
."

I flipped to the second page.  "The problem is that freedom costs, and
we need to find out if America is still willing to pay the high price
of it.  This country is at an important crossroads.  Is the government
going to watch everything we do?  Take away what they think is bad for
us?  Treat us like children?  Where will that all stop?  Will we have
to fly to Canada to tell someone we think he's an asshole?  To have a
drink?  To yell at our kids?  To smoke a cigarette?"

I continued to read directly from the pages as my voice gained
strength.  "You're all aware of what the suit in Montana could cost us
and what future suits like that could cost us.  If this kind of thing
continues, we're all going to be permanently out of work and unable to
provide for our families.  It was a hard decision, but it was the only
one we could make.  It was time to stand and fight."

I heard a gentle murmur and dared a glance at my audience.
Surprisingly, there were a few nodding heads out there.

"Maybe America doesn't want us, and we're never going to go back to
work.  I don't know.  But we need to find out before we're too weak to
do anything for the people who keep this company running: you.  We have
some cash reserves and good relationships with our banks, and we're
going use that to help out because we're all in this together."

I flipped the page and felt a weak smile spread across my face.  I
would have bet good money that nothing could have made me smile on that
particular afternoon.

"We're going to put everyone on twenty percent pay for as long as we
can and we're arranging low-interest loans for our employees through
our banks."

More nods.  I wiped the sweat from my forehead and resolved to actually
look at the people I was talking to.

"We'll be turning factories like this one into grocery stores stocked
by our food divisions, and we'll be selling at ten percent below
wholesale.  Baby formula, diapers, and the like will be free."

I couldn't believe it, but a few people clapped.  And, in turn, I had
to applaud Paul Trainer.  The baby formula thing was a nice touch.

"Don't get too excited," I said, adlibbing for a moment.  "We're just
trying to figure out a way to get rid of all those snack cakes."

That got a pretty good laugh.

"We've also convinced our beer distributors to pitch in 'cause I think
we could all use a drink right about now.  Well, except for me ..."

More applause.

"And don't worry about your friends and neighbors all the tobacco
companies are together on this.  We're going to do what we can for
everyone."

I flipped another page.  "We also want you to know that you aren't
being singled out here.  By next week we'll have a fifty percent
reduction in our headquarters staff.  And if this drags on, it is
targeted to go to seventy percent before long."

No clapping for that one, but effective just the same.  Misery loves
company.

"The bottom line is that we believe in this fight and we're ready to go
all the way with it."

There was a disturbance near the stairs, and I saw Blonde blocking the
path of Senator Fred Randal.  He looked up at me with an expression
that wasn't exactly pleading his ego would never allow that.  Let's
just say hopeful.  He must have been hiding out somewhere in the
parking lot to see which way the wind was blowing.

I turned back to the crowd, letting Randal cool his heels at the edge
of the podium for the moment.  "We're going to get through this, but it
isn't going to be easy.  We know what we're offering you isn't much,
but we hope that it shows you all how much we value you and appreciate
everything you've done for this company all the hard work and
sacrifices."

More applause.

I was busy formulating an introduction for Randal when I flipped to the
last page and found Paul Trainer's shaky scrawl across the top.

I expect you'll need this

"Some of you've probably noticed Fred Randal roaming around here
today," I read, "and I'm hoping we can convince him to come up here and
say a few words.  I'm sure you know how supportive he's been of this
company and the people who work here."

I turned toward the stairs and leaned into the mike.  "Senator?  Can we
steal a few minutes?"

He bounded up the steps and gave me one of those two-handed shakes,
then went right for the mike.  "Thanks, Trevor."

I took a few steps back and looked on with an appropriately respectful
expression as he spoke.

"I guess we've all seen something like this coming for a long time, and
as much as we wanted to put it off there was never going to be a good
time ..."

Randal seemed to be warming up to his subject, so I sneaked back down
the steps and toward my car with Blonde and Brunette in tow.

I still wasn't sure how I felt about any of this, but I was happy
everybody was going to get a little help.  And I didn't feel quite as
hated by everyone.  That was a good thing.  And I hadn't been shot.
Definitely something to be thankful for.  All in all, not a day with
much to recommend it, but it could have been worse.

We made it back to the truck without incident everyone seemed content
to let me fade into the considerable glow of Fred Randal, which was
okay with me.

I opened the passenger-side door but before I could climb inside, we
found ourselves surrounded.

"Step back!"  Blonde shouted as he and his partner jumped in front of
me.  "Everyone away from the car!"

It was pointless, though.  With one exception, each of the ten of the
men around us weighed at least two-fifty and they'd moved in close
enough that it would be impossible for Blonde and Brunette to grab
their guns before they were beaten to death.

I fell backward, hitting my head on the top of the car and landing
halfway in the passenger seat as a tall, thin man with kind of a
longish crew cut strolled up to me.

"Mr.  Barnett, I was wondering if we could talk for a moment."

I recognized him as Lawrence Mann the new director of the Tobacco
Workers' Union.  I'd never met the man, but all the information I'd
seen about him had been highly negative.  Of course, that was a
management perspective.  Reading between the lines suggested that what
worried headquarters was that he was an honest, intelligent, dedicated
man who genuinely cared about the people who had elected him.

Blonde looked back at me as I wrestled myself out of the car.  I nodded
calmly in his direction and accepted Mann's outstretched hand before
following him across the grass toward the factory building.

We stepped through a door that I'd assumed was locked and climbed a set
of stairs to a small room above the factory floor.  Mann closed the
door behind us and we sat.  He looked at me for a long time long enough
to make me feel uncomfortable before finally speaking.

"So is everything you said true?"

It was a good question.

"I guess."

He smiled, exposing the crooked teeth of a person who had grown up poor
but not the yellow teeth of a smoker.  "I'm not sure what that means,
Trevor.  Let me rephrase.  Do you personally guarantee it?"

I'd never met a union head, but this isn't what I pictured.  He
reminded me of a philosophy professor I'd once had more than Jimmy
Hoffa.

"I don't guarantee anything.  But I think it's likely.  Trainer needs
friends.  He's got a few in the press, but what he really needs is the
South."

"So he's buying our friendship with a few table scraps?"

"That seems overly harsh.  I mean, they may be table scraps, but
they're all we have to give."

"And if this drags on longer than you expect?"

"I don't know."

"I do.  You'll declare bankruptcy, cut off our support, and then point
a finger at Washington for starving American babies."

I shrugged.  "Seems like a good bet."

"But you and Trainer won't starve."

Another shrug.  "I'm not so sure about me, but no, Trainer isn't going
to starve.  Your people are going to hurt worse than upper management.
That's just the way of the world."

He leaned back in his chair, lifting the two front legs off the ground.
"You're not what I expected."

"I was thinking the same thing about you."

"Why now?"  he asked.  "Why is Paul pulling this stunt now?"

"Montana?"  I said.

"That could set a dangerous precedent and maybe it would eventually
bring down the industry, but by the time the shit really hits the fan,
Paul will be dead or in a nursing home.  Why do something this risky
now when you could stick your successor with it?"

I didn't have an immediate answer, but Mann seemed content to sit there
while I formulated one.

It didn't take long, but I wasn't sure if I should share it.  After a
little consideration, I decided I didn't owe Trainer anything.  He'd
blindsided me again today and as far as I was concerned, I was earning
every dime of that two hundred and fifty grand.

"A rush," I said, finally.

"What?"

"I think this whole this is giving Trainer a hard-on."

Mann laughed and rolled up the sleeves of his work shirt.  "I think you
may have hit the nail on the head, Trevor.  But in the end, I guess his
motivation doesn't matter.  The truth is that he's right the industry
is being bled, and it's going to die if we don't do something about it.
We need a long-term solution."

"I suppose."

"So what's your advice to me, Trevor?"

"I'm not sure what to tell you, Mr.  Mann ..."

"Call me Larry."

"I'm not sure what to tell you, Larry.  I figure you don't have many
alternatives right now.  Go along with this for a while.  If nothing
comes of it, you spent a couple of uncomfortable weeks and then can go
back to the status quo.  On the other hand, if we get protection from
the government, our stock is going to go through the roof and so is our
profitability.  That ought to put you in a nice position next time your
contract comes up."

"Are you a smoker, Trevor?"

A strange change in subject, and a hard question to answer.

"I smoke some.  No, not really, I guess."

"A lot of my people are.  And it might be hard for you to imagine how
the prospect of not having access to cigarettes is adding to their
stress."

I hadn't considered that.  It never occurred to me that the people who
worked at a production facility wouldn't be able to find a way to get
them.  Hats off to Trainer for his ruthless efficiency.

"Where are they?"  I said.  "The cigarettes, I mean."

"The company cracked down hard and fast.  They had this factory closed
and everyone out of it in less than an hour.  What finished product we
had, they trucked to a warehouse and put under nonunion guard."

I nodded slowly.  "What if I could arrange that we use union guys as
guards?  You know, to try to help keep the jobs in the family."

I hesitated for a moment but then decided that this was the kind of
decision executive vice presidents made.

"And if some smokes turned up missing, I doubt anybody would notice
with everything that's going on.  Now if they were to start getting
sold or passed out to every acquaintance and second cousin twice
removed, well, I imagine someone would notice that."

"I understand," Mann said in a way that gave me the impression that he
really did and that I'd never have to give this another thought.

Twenty-Eight.

Blonde and Brunette seemed to be in gener ally dark moods after their
failure to save me from Larry Mann's hordes the day before.  Somehow,
though, I got the impression that it was less about the fact that I
could have been killed than it was the blow to their carefully
maintained machismo.

As we swung around the corner and approached the crush of angry
protesters outside the Terra Building, I slumped down in the backseat
and reached for a pair of sunglasses I'd purchased based solely on
their impressive size.

"Not today, Trevor," Brunette said.  "Sit up."

"What?"

When we cleared the police barricades, the back windows started to
descend.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Sit up, Trevor!"

The sides of the slow-moving car were sliding against people who
weren't quick enough to shove their way out of its path.  I centered
myself in the backseat and tried to cover my face without being
obvious.

"Sit up!"  Brunette said again, this time twisting around, snatching
the glasses from my face, and jerking me straight in my seat.

"What the hell are you doing?"  I shouted, trying to break his grip on
the front of my shirt and throw myself to the floor.  But it was too
late.  I could hear the rhythmic chanting of the mob degenerate into
random shouts.

I'd been spotted.

The crowd closed in on us, and soon the windows bristled with arms as
people reached for me.  By the time a man wearing a Salem Lights tank
top managed to get hold of me, I'd pretty much resigned myself to being
torn limb from limb.  Instead of pulling me from the car, though, he
began shaking my hand profusely.  A few seconds later, I was
frantically shaking hands on both sides.

When we passed through the second set of barricades protecting the
entrance to Terra's underground parking, the people fell away.  I
turned and stared through the rear window as they applauded and pumped
their fists in the air.

"What the hell was that all about?"  I mumbled, falling back in my
seat.

"You're a popular guy," Brunette said.

As much as I wanted to believe that, it seemed like an awfully quick
about-face.  I couldn't help wondering if the outpouring of support was
the result of genuine sentiment or the promise of a trunkful of smokes
for everyone involved.

The delicate illusion that things might be looking up dissipated when
one of the public elevators servicing the garage opened before the
private one I'd been using arrived.  My old friend Stan walked out with
a heavy box in his hands, flanked by a few of my other former cohorts
from the fifth floor.  It seemed that with everything going on, the
Ministry of Misdirection had become moot.

"Well, who do we have here?"

I feigned surprise.  "Stan!  Hey!  How you doin'?"

"Not too goddamn well.  I got laid off."  He walked right up to me,
bringing his face to within a foot of mine, as the others fanned out. I
heard the doors to my SUV open behind me, but I waved Blonde and
Brunette back.

"I guess you're doing okay, though, huh, Trevor?  I bet you got a big
raise to go along with all that money your granddaddy handed you. Yeah,
I'll bet you're getting paid pretty good to put us all out of work."

His thick face was bright red, but I couldn't be sure if it was from
rage or the weight of the box in his hands.  The other three people
standing around me seemed content to let Stan do the talking, but were
obviously in agreement as to how much of an asshole I was.  Apparently,
they hadn't gotten the memo about my impending sainthood.

"I didn't lay you off, Stan.  I "

"Are you having fun being on TV while the rest of us are wondering how
we're going to make it?"  he said.  "Guess what happens doesn't matter
to you one way or the other.  Somebody will always be there to take
care of the Barnetts."

It occurred to me that there was a certain irony to this situation.
Stan liked nothing more than to deride the people who sued the tobacco
companies, arguing (incessantly) that they knew the risks and were just
looking for someone to blame.  As I saw it, this was the same thing:
News reports or no news reports, Stan knew damn well that I hadn't gone
from file clerk to policy Svengali over the course of a week and a
half.  He just needed someone to blame, and he didn't have the guts to
yell at Paul Trainer.

It also wasn't lost on me that, much like the industry my ancestors had
started, I didn't have a friend left in the world: not my parents, not
Darius, not Stan.  Not Anne.  Thirty-two years of being terrified of
the prospect of crossing anyone or making anyone angry had gotten me
nothing.  Seriously.  Zip.

Well, I was done with spending all my time trying to keep people from
hating me.  If I was going to be so hated that I needed bodyguards, why
not play the part?

"You know what you and your family can do, Trevor?  You can just go to
"

"Careful," I said, cutting him off in mid-insult.  "Someday this is
going to be over and when it is, I may be the one deciding whether or
not you're one of the people coming back."  I looked around at his
compatriots, every one of whom I'd known for years.  "And that goes for
the rest of you, too."

I don't think I'd made an honest-to-God threat since my days protecting
Darius in junior high, and honestly it didn't feel that great.  I must
have been convincing, though, because Stan shut up.

"Y'all want to get the hell out of my way?"  I said.

Suddenly everyone was in motion, trying to get away from me as fast as
they could.

On the way to my office, I found Anne and the other executive
assistants huddled around the cappuccino machine whispering.  They fell
silent when I walked by.  Anne was undoubtedly pumping them for
information that could be used against Terra and probably against me,
but I didn't care.  Really.  Not at all.

I went straight to my desk and fell into my chair.  I wanted to dive
into an endless pile of work, to crowd everything else out of my mind.
The problem with that plan was that I still didn't really know what I
did.  My desk remained neat, nearly empty, and completely dust-free.

"I saw you on TV again," Anne said, walking across my office settling
into a chair.  "You're making all kinds of friends."

It wasn't what I wanted to hear, and I frowned deeply.  For the first
time, I actually felt regret about hiring her.  I found myself
wondering if I could lure Ms.  Davenport back.

"Looks like they're clearing out the building," she continued.
"Essential personnel only.  I guess that's us."

"I guess so."

She cocked her head a little.  "Are you all right, Trevor?  You seem
kind of down."

"I'm fine."

She nodded but obviously didn't believe me.

"Paul Trainer wants to see you in his office."

I didn't move and neither did she.

"Have you decided where you're going with this yet, Trevor?"

"Wherever the wind takes me, I suppose."

"Hurricane," she said.  "Wherever the hurricane takes you."

"Excellent job, Trevor!"  Trainer said as I walked through the door
that connected our offices.  "Excellent!  That was the first step, and
it was a hell of a big one.  Have you seen the press on this?
Fantastic.  And the New York Times article did you really say that
Godfrey could kiss your ass?"

I nodded, and he slapped me on the back.  "Now you're showing some
spirit!"

My father was sitting on a sofa against the wall.  "Congratulations,
Trevor.  You had those people eating out of your hand."

"They're not stupid," I said, a little testily.  "They're with us for
the short term, but they're watching.  We'd better keep up appearances
because they're going to get pretty pissed off if they see us hanging
out at the country club while they're eating cat food."

My father's expression darkened but that seemed to be losing its effect
on me.

"Of course, they're not stupid," Trainer said soothingly.  "And we're
going to take care of them as best we can.  Don't you worry about
that."

I sat down in a leather wing back uninvited.  "I told Larry Mann that
we'd transfer the security for our warehouses over to the union.  I
also implied that we'd look the other way if some of our inventory
disappeared, as long as it was for personal use by our employees."

An expression of worry crossed Trainer's face but then disappeared so
quickly that I wasn't sure if it was ever there.  "We'll take care of
it.  Good thinking, son."

Trainer sat down, and my father continued the report he'd been making
when I'd walked in.

"The third suit attempting to hold us responsible for an incident of
domestic violence was filed this morning.  They're arguing that we're
liable for creating an addictive product and then cutting off supply.
It's what I was warning you about, Paul.  State governments are
reporting a significant increase in this kind of petty violence. Police
departments are absorbing huge overtime costs, and they're already
looking into the viability of suing us to recoup those costs .. ."

Trainer waved a hand in disgust.  "The government bitches incessantly
about how the sale of cigarettes costs them billions, and now they're
complaining that not selling cigarettes is going to cost them
billions."

"Except that now they're actually telling the truth," I said.  "The
loss in tax income combined with the increased short-term costs is
going to hit them pretty hard."

"There've also been reports of violence against convenience store
employees from customers who think the stores are hoarding," my father
continued.  "We'll see suits from every clerk who gets so much as a
scratch."

Trainer didn't seem concerned.

"Wholesalers and retailers haven't filed against us for loss of
business yet, but if this goes on long enough I guarantee you they
will.  Right now, they're afraid because they see this as a short-term
situation and don't want to do anything that might damage their
relationship with us."

"Smart people," Trainer said.  "I plan to make it my personal business
to fuck every son of a bitch who turns against us.  I suggest we make
that quietly known."

My father nodded.  "Eventually, though, they'll be looking at
bankruptcy, and then those kinds of threats will lose their impact."

"We'll have to hope this won't go on that long," Trainer said.

"What's the government doing?"  I asked.  "Has the president said
anything yet?"

Trainer shook his head.  "The silence from the White House is
deafening."

"Have you called him?"

"Nope," he said.  "And I'm not going to.  I don't care how long it
takes, that bastard's going to flinch first."

Twenty-Nine.

Is THAT WHAT S GOT YOU IN SUCH A SNIT?"  ANNE

said.  "The fact that those guys are around you all the time?"

We were cruising down the highway at exactly the speed limit, with
Blonde and Brunette trailing only a few feet behind in an
ominous-looking black Yukon.  It had taken some serious arguing in the
corporate jet, but I'd managed to convince them to let us rent our own
car and drive ourselves to the makeshift Montana television studio. The
truth was, I was getting sick of those guys.  After the thing with
Larry Mann and their putting me on display for those protesters
yesterday, I was becoming increasingly certain that they were more a
hindrance to my safety than an enhancement.

"That's part of it, I guess.  They're just Trainer's storm troopers,
you know.  Their job isn't to protect me; it's to spy on me and make
sure I perform whatever trick Trainer wants me to."

"And you're just figuring this out?"

She tucked a foot up beneath her and leaned back against the door of
the car.  I tried not to notice how pretty she was in the short green
skirt and tan blouse that had, for some reason, replaced the
women's-prison-warden thing she'd had going on before.  I wanted to
hold on to my anger and suspicion of her.

I assumed she'd refuse when I invited her to come along on this fool's
errand, but she'd surprised me by accepting.  Why had I even bothered
to ask her?  Honestly, because I just wasn't ready to lump her in with
every one else.  Because I wanted more than anything for her to prove
that she wasn't just another predator waiting for me to turn my back.

"Then what's the rest of it?"  Anne said.  "Are you upset that your
father's angry with you for contradicting him?"

I'd told her about the meeting.  Frankly, I'd told her too much.

"I don't care about that."

Every day, she seemed to look at me with more intensity.  Or it might
have just been my imagination.  I wasn't sure.

"Have you been thinking about whose side you're on?"

I shrugged and eased past a tractor that was taking up most of the
road.  "I'm not on anybody's side."

"Don't you think it's time you pick teams, Trevor?"  Her voice was a
little hesitant, like she was weighing every word before she spoke.
"You can't support both your father and Trainer."

"Trainer and my father both want the same thing, Anne a strong,
profitable company."

She smiled the way you would at a kid who believed in the Easter
Bunny.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What?"  I repeated.

"This really isn't any of my business."

"For God's sake!  What?"

She took a deep breath and let it out.  "Trevor ... Have you ever
thought about what will happen if Trainer wins?  If he gets the
industry immunity from lawsuits?"

I shrugged.  "Terracorp will make a lot more money."

"Because you sell more cigarettes?"

"No.  Because we won't have to spend billions a year on lawyers and
judgments."

"So you're saying that lawyers will become more or less irrelevant to
the tobacco industry no more important than they are at, say, a company
that makes tennis shoes?"

"I guess."

"And what happens to your father?  He's one of the most powerful men in
the company.  Will he continue to be?"

"You're saying that my father would put his own position over the good
of the company?"  My voice was a little too loud for the confines of
the car.  "What you're forgetting is that his trust is bigger than
mine.  He stands to make a huge amount of money if the industry's stock
rebounds.  Did you ever think of that?"

She twisted back around in her seat and looked through the windshield
at the endless, rural landscape.

"I guess you know him better than me."

We WERE broadcasting from a high-school gym, though the "Hardball" set
had been flawlessly re-created and I doubted even the biggest fan would
be able to tell that we weren't in the regular studio.  My opponent was
C. William Ivers, the lead plaintiffs attorney in the ever-present
Montana suit and the most dangerous man in the world from the
industry's point of view.

"This is an incredibly obvious attempt by the cigarette industry to
coerce the government into protecting it from lawsuits to return it to
a time when it had absolutely no obligation to the people it kills and
to allow it to continue to peddle death with absolutely no
responsibility to anyone other than its shareholders."

He looked over at me and decided to mimic Angus Scalia's fabulously
successful strategy.  "Trevor Barnett, here, is the figurehead for all
this: a man whose family practically started the tobacco industry and
who's become obscenely wealthy from the suffering of others.  A man who
wants to get his income back on track at any cost."

This time I was a little better prepared and a lot less nervous than I
had been in my first television appearance.  And while Ivers was a
formidable man taller than me, with weathered skin and a loud,
charismatic way of speaking he seemed pretty mundane compared to the
hundreds of un employed and undoubtedly well-armed tobacco workers I'd
talked to a couple of days ago.

"First," I said calmly, "let me clarify this whole issue of my personal
finances: I have about a million dollars' worth of tobacco company
stocks and I get a percentage of the dividends and capital gains that
come off them.  That income is zero right now and has been for years. I
can't tell you how much I've been paid by the trust over my lifetime,
because I honestly don't know exactly.  What I can tell you is that it
was just enough to cover college, a car, some furniture, and a down
payment on a house that Mr.  Ivers here wouldn't live in on a bet.
Until I was recently promoted, I made just over forty thousand dollars
a year, and that's what I lived on.  There are a lot of investors out
there who stand to gain a lot more than me if the tobacco industry
stock starts climbing again, and there are a lot of people who have
more to lose than I do if the industry tanks.  Mr.  Ivers and his
colleagues would be examples of people who have the potential to lose
an incredible amount of income if Tobacco is protected from suits.  The
lawyers in the settlement with the states have already collected over
ten billion dollars."

"I make a good living," Ivers admitted.  "The difference is, I do it
protecting the people and not killing them."

I smiled serenely.  "I once saw a lawyer on TV talking about how
California was thinking about blocking frivolous suits against
skateboard parks so they could be reopened and help get kids off the
streets and into a supervised environment.  She actually argued with a
straight face that the state would stop maintaining its streets and
sidewalks if these kids had parks to play in.  Did she have these
children's safely and best interests at heart?  I don't think so.  And
it's the same thing here.  Let's say that the tobacco industry loses
the Montana suit.  We don't have two hundred and fifty billion dollars,
so the plaintiffs are most likely going to have to settle for a couple
billion.  That means Mr.  Ivers and his colleagues get hundreds of
millions and each plaintiff walks away with a few grand.  Who's
benefiting here ?"

"Absolute nonsense," Ivers said.  "You're just trying to divert
attention from the fact that you're looking to put an industry that
kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people a year above the law. We
all know what the industry would do with that kind of freedom."

Chris Matthews seemed content to just sit there and listen, so I dove
back in.

"Everyone out there, if they think logically about it, agrees that no
one but attorneys benefit from these suits.  I mean, they don't keep
anyone from taking up the habit, they don't make anyone quit, they
don't cure anybody of cancer, and generally the plaintiff never sees
any money.  So if all this legal wrestling doesn't do anyone any good
other than you why not just put a stop to it and instead create some
clearly written laws that will do some good?"

"I have to disagree, Mr.  Barnett.  The settlement with the states
increased the price of cigarettes and helped put in place a number of
rules that curbed your industry's ability to market to children.  I'm
still not sure I understand how making you answerable to no one helps
anyone but you."

I considered that for a moment.  "I'll concede the point that
litigation has precipitated some changes in the cost and marketing of
cigarettes, though I'd argue that those changes haven't done anything
to reduce smoking rates.  To answer your question about how making us
answerable to no one might help: Maybe it'll make people think twice
about smoking when they know it's their sole responsibility?  Or maybe
that's not what the American people decide.  Maybe they decide that
cigarettes should be outlawed.  Or regulated as a drug?  Or maybe
everyone who buys cigarettes should be required to sign a document
stating that they understand the health risks and that they consider
those risks acceptable.  Any way you slice it, it's an exciting
time."

"But you're not counting on them being outlawed or regulated, are you?
You're looking to use smokers' addiction to nicotine and the
government's addiction to tobacco money to strong-arm this country into
caving in and giving you everything you've ever wanted."

It was strange timing, but I realized that wasn't what I wanted.  And
while national television probably wasn't the place for it, I felt an
answer to Anne's question about whose side I was on begin to form in my
mind.

"We're not trying to use our position to force anyone's hand here," I
said, despite the fact that I knew this was exactly Paul Trainer's
plan.  "I'm not suggesting that we protect the industry with some
one-sided all-encompassing piece of legislation.  We need to think
about a comprehensive policy that would be the product of a dialog
between the interested parties: us, smokers, the anti tobacco lobby,
and the government."

"So you're trying to get me to believe that an industry that has never
done anything positive without being dragged kicking and screaming is
going to make these concessions out of the goodness of its heart?  Why
am I not buying that?"

"Listen," I said, "there are studies that say seventy-five percent of
smokers want to quit and only about three percent succeed.  That should
tell you two things: Smoking is not a desirable habit, and it's
addictive.  We're not selling cigarettes for people's health and if
anyone out there thinks we are, then frankly they're idiots.  We're
selling them because people want them and we want to make money.
Period."

"There are a lot of companies out there making money, Mr.  Barnett, but
they don't resort to killing people to do it.  The fact that you can be
so glib about this product suggests to me that you've never witnessed
the horrible deaths it produces that you just look at reports and
numbers, and ignore the human reality.  I suggest you go to a hospital
and watch someone suffocating to death before you get on TV again."

"I want to be completely clear here I am not suggesting that people
start smoking.  In fact, let me say to anyone watching this program
who's considering it, I strongly recommend that you don't.  Mr.  Ivers
is right: It can kill you, and your death probably won't be
pleasant."

I couldn't help wondering if Paul Trainer was having chest pains yet.

"The question we need to answer," I continued, "isn't whether Americans
should smoke; it's whether they should be allowed to smoke.  Are
Americans smart enough to understand the risks and benefits?  And if
they are, are they willing to take responsibility for their own
actions?  If not, we need serious legislation to completely ban this
product just like we have narcotics.  But having the government's
executive and legislative branches saying 'smoke up' and the judicial
branch saying 'stop' is ridiculous and counterproductive.  We all need
to get on the same page.  What page that is, I don't know."  I paused
for a moment and mentally confirmed that what I was about to say was
compatible with my new policy of complete, twenty-four-hour-a-day
honesty.

"And you'll be surprised to hear, I don't really care."

Thirty.

"I just don't get it," Anne said.  "What's Paul Trainer's angle?"

We were back on the road again, speeding along the worn asphalt as the
afternoon sun created startling contrasts in the endless rural
landscape.  I watched the mesmerizing rows of crops as they sped by,
almost completely ignoring the empty road ahead.

"Why would he tell you to say those things this early in the game?  I
mean, I know he's trying to do this honesty schtick to boost his
popularity, but that seems like it went too far.  What's he after?"

"I can answer that.  Paul Trainer wants everyone in America to smoke a
pack of cigarettes every single day of their lives, and he doesn't want
to be held accountable for it."

"Only a pack a day?  Why not three?  It'd triple his income."

I shook my head.  "Three'd kill you too young, and dead people don't
buy product.  We figure a pack a day is the magic number that maximizes
sales over a smoker's lifetime."

"I don't think I've ever heard that statistic."

"It's not really a number we advertise."

She turned in her seat and tucked a panty-hose-wrapped leg beneath her
again.

"Why wouldn't Trainer just let everybody sweat for a while?  I'm not
sure how suggesting a compromise so soon fits into his strategy."

I shrugged.  "It probably doesn't.  I just made that stuff up."

"What?"

"I just made it up."

I couldn't stop a slight smile from spreading across my face.  For the
first time in all this maybe the first time in my life I felt kind
of... free.  I was the master of my own destiny and whatever happened
to me, I figured I could handle it.  Temporary, groundless euphoria,
maybe, but euphoria just the same.

"So what you're telling me is that you just went on national
television, admitted cigarettes cause horrible deaths, and suggested
that the industry would make concessions for lawsuit protection without
any authority at all?"

"Well, I am an executive vice president, you know."

In the rearview mirror, I could see the black Yukon with Brunette
behind the wheel.  Blonde was in the passenger seat, leaning into the
windshield pointing angrily at his cell phone.  Obviously Paul Trainer
had heard about my performance and wanted to have a little chat.  I
hadn't brought my phone, so I just sped up.

"You're serious," Anne said.  "You just sat there and said whatever you
felt like saying."

"Pretty much."

"Are we having a breakthrough, Trevor?"

"I think maybe I am."

"Just in time for them to throw all your stuff out on the sidewalk."

I smirked.  "You'd think, but every time I figure I'm about to get
canned, I get promoted."

Anne laughed and shook her head.  "Not this time.  Do you have any idea
how hard it's going to be for Trainer to walk away from a promise his
executive vice president made on national TV?"

Of course, I was still a fraud the same hapless pawn Trainer had been
pushing around since all this started.  But perception was reality in
this busines:, and Trainer had created the perception that I had power
if only to draw attention away from himself.  He'd counted on the fact
that

I'd just go along, and I couldn't really blame him.  Until now, it had
been a reasonable bet.

"So don't keep me in suspense, Trevor.  Have you finally decided what
you want out of all this?"

Her, of course.  But I didn't think that was the answer she was looking
for.

"It wasn't that big a breakthrough."

"Guess I shouldn't expect miracles.  A step in the right direction,
though, if you ask me."

"What about you, Anne.  What do you want?"

"That's easy.  I want everyone to quit smoking and live a long, happy
life.  I want to stop cigarettes from tearing families apart.  I want
to make sure that no one ever has to walk into a doctor's office and
find out that the tobacco industry's killed them."

"But how far are you willing to go to get that?"  I said.  "Do you want
to outlaw cigarettes?  To take away a person's right to make that
choice?  Isn't the truth that those people walk into the doctor's
office and find out that they've killed themselves?"

She didn't immediately respond, and I glanced over at her as I let the
car glide toward a four-way stop.  For the first time, she looked a
little uncertain about her place in the world.

"On that subject... Well, let's just say I'm still waiting for my
breakthr "

The truck came from nowhere.

It was one of those ridiculously long, extended cab rigs with heavily
tinted windows and an enormous black push-bar on the front.  I slammed
on the brakes, and threw an arm out to keep Anne from sliding around
her seat belt.

The truck, which had run its stop sign, looked like it was going to
pass harmlessly in front of us, but at the last minute it swerved and
smashed into the front of our car.  My head hit the steering wheel and
Anne pitched sideways, squashing my hand between her and the
dashboard.

I think my disorientation after the crash was more from surprise than
my impact with the wheel, and I managed to shake it off pretty
quickly.

"Are you all right?"  I said.

"I think so.  Yeah, I'm " She suddenly went silent, staring past me
toward the truck that had hit us.  I craned my neck, causing a stream
of blood to flow painfully into my eye, and saw four men running toward
us.  For a moment I thought they wanted to help, but then I saw the
guns in their hands.

"Oh, shit," I mumbled and then twisted around the other way and looked
through the back window.  Blonde and Brunette had their doors thrown
open and were partially hiding behind them, guns drawn.  Thank God.

The sound of machine-gun fire is unmistakable but a lot louder than
you'd think.  When it started, I released my seat belt and pulled Anne
down, covering her with my body.  In retrospect, a kind of heroic act
that I'm not sure I can really take credit for.  It was strangely
instinctive, and I'm still surprised that I reacted that way.

When I raised my head and took a peek out the back window, the
windshield of Blonde and Brunette's Yukon was full of bullet holes.  I
ducked down again, waiting for them to return fire, but instead heard
the squeal of tires.  Another peek confirmed what I already knew: My
bodyguards were flooring it down the road the way we'd just come
from.

"You've got to be kidding me," I said as my car door was pulled open
and someone grabbed me by the hair.  I tried to keep my grip on Anne,
but it wasn't possible.  A moment later, I found myself lying on my
back in the street with my legs still halfway in the car.

The man hovering over me, strangely distant at the other end of a rifle
barrel, was dressed completely in camouflage and had a handkerchief
wrapped around his face like a bandit from the old west.

I heard Anne scream and I tried to sit up, but the guy slammed the gun
barrel into my chest hard enough to take my breath away.  He yelled
something in a language I didn't recognize, but still managed to make
his point: If I moved again, I was dead.

"Trevor!"

It was Anne's voice.  My vision had cleared enough to see her
struggling against a similarly dressed man who had a pistol in one hand
and her hair in the other.  I felt a sudden wave of fury and fear, but
the man above me anticipated my reaction and moved his gun so the
barrel rested right between my eyes.

"She doesn't have anything to do with this," I shouted.  "She's just my
secretary!  Let her go!"

They ignored me, of course.

The gun swung away, and the man holding it dragged me to my feet.  I
was probably six inches taller than him and he stepped back warily,
motioning me toward the truck.

Anne was about twenty feet away, doubled over at the waist, trying
uselessly to break her captor's grip on her hair.

"What do you want?"  I said, my voice shaking slightly.

The guy covering me motioned with the barrel of his gun again, trying
to get me moving toward the truck.

Then a strange thing happened.  There was this deep, chest-rattling
thud that kind of reminded me of the bass from one of those powerful
stereos people put in their cars.  When I looked back at Anne and saw
the blood spattered all over her, my legs nearly buckled beneath me.

"Anne!  Oh my Go "

But she was fine.  I shifted my gaze a bit and saw that the jacket of
the man holding her was partially shredded and his chest was gushing
blood.  He crumpled slowly to the ground, but didn't release his grip
on Anne's hair.  She managed to stay on her feet and one final jerk
freed her.

I don't know how long it took for all this to happen, but at about the
time Anne was stumbling backward away from the dead man on the ground,
I heard the echo of what sounded like a distant gunshot.

Three of our attackers were still alive, but they seemed to have
forgotten I was there.  They were all shouting and pointing and
shooting past me up what seemed to be an empty road.

Now, that probably would have been a good time to make a run for it or
dive behind the car, but I didn't.  I just stood there, squinting
against the glare of the setting sun and trying to see what everyone
was shooting at.  There was something... A car.  Not the one Blonde and
Brunette had been driving, though.  This one was smaller.  And blue. Or
maybe gray.  Whatever color it was, it was parked in the middle of the
road a little over half a mile away.

I heard that weird thud again, and out of the corner of my eye saw the
man who'd dragged me from the car pretty much explode.  It wasn't like
the movies, where the victim always clasped his chest, teetered
awkwardly, then crumpled dramatically to the ground.  Instead, a big
part of the guy's chest kind of disintegrated and sprayed through what
was left of his back.  In less than a second, he went from a human
being to a shredded piece of meat.

I felt two hands clamp down on my arm and then a relatively weak tug.

"Come on, Trevor!  Run!"  Anne said over the inevitable rumble of a
gunshot.

I blinked at her stupidly and then let her pull me around our rental
car, where we ducked down behind the tire.  She wrapped her arms around
me and I followed suit, pulling her close and wondering if it was her
shaking or me.

"We've got to get out of here," I said as my brain slowly started to
process information again.  Admittedly, not a tricky deduction, but it
seemed right on point.

I leaned back, still holding on to Anne, and examined the front of the
car.  It was totaled if we were leaving, it wasn't going to be in this
thing.

I knew that two of our attackers were still alive, though I could only
see the one shooting over the hood of the giant pickup.  He suddenly
ducked back behind the cab and a moment later half of the front
windshield, the entire driver's-side passenger window, and most of the
metal between them exploded.  I watched him stagger back and fall to
the ground, his face mangled by flying glass.

As the shot finally sounded, the other man reappeared, dragged his
compatriot into what was left of their truck, and then left us in a fog
of burning rubber.

Anne watched them go by, obviously as confused as I was.  She released
me and pulled back a few inches.  "Are they ... Are they gone?"

I got on my hands and knees and peeked around the car bonnet again.
From that position, all I could see was the two mutilated bodies and
the expanding pools of blood beneath them.  The old cliche "eerie
silence" is the only way I can describe the atmosphere at that moment.
Everything had gone from complete chaos to complete stillness in a
matter of seconds.

Anne tugged on my shirt, and I turned in time to see her wipe a tear
from her cheek.  "What do we do now?"

"I don't know.  Run?"

The road was bordered by endless miles of grass cropped short by
grazing cattle.  Why ranching?  Why couldn't we have been pinned down
next to a tall, dense crop of corn?  Or an impenetrable forest of pine
trees?

She shook her head.  "We'd never make it.  What about your cell
phone?"

"Didn't bring it," I said, sounding doomed even to myself.

"Do you think your bodyguards went for help?"

I didn't answer, and her eyes dulled a little as fear was replaced with
resignation.

How could I have been so stupid?  How could I have gotten her involved
in this?  If she got hurt or killed, it was my fault.

I turned and started to crawl around the front of the car, doing my
best to ignore the dead man only a few feet away.  Anne grabbed my
foot.  "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to take a look."

"No!"  she said.  "It's too dangerous... You ..."

Her voice trailed off, probably because she realized it was only
marginally more dangerous than sitting there and waiting for whatever
was to come.

I crept along the smashed bumper, took a deep breath, and then eased my
head out into the open.

"What do you see?  Anything?"

I did see something: a lone man about a hundred yards away, running
fast with a rifle in his hands.  He stopped suddenly with an economy of
motion that suggested mindless reflex and aimed the gun right at me.  I
pulled back so fast I lost my balance and landed on my back.  The
gunshot I expected to hear never materialized.

"What is it?"  Anne said, slipping her hands beneath my arms and
helping be back to the relative safety of the car's tire.  "Did you "

"You can come out!"

The accent was undoubtedly British and sounded like it was coming from
just behind the car.

"Hello?  Come out, please!"

I took a deep breath and slowly stood, raising my hands and moving away
from where Anne was hiding.  She made a grab for me, but I was already
out of range.

He was thin, probably six feet tall, and had a slightly sunburned face
beneath short brown hair.  His chest was heaving a bit from his run,
causing the rifle in his hands to rock back and forth.

"Where's the girl?"  he said, scanning the rolling landscape around
us.

"It doesn't matter.  She's just my secretary.  She doesn't have
anything to do with this."

He seemed to be only half listening as he continued to concentrate on
the open terrain.  "Come over here."

I did as he asked, but stopped when I got to within a few feet of
him.

"I don't think you understand, Mr.  Barnett, I'm "

Now, you'd think I'd have started to put some things together here, but
I was surrounded by mutilated bodies, terrified that I was going to
die, furious at my wasted life, and wracked with guilt about dragging
Anne into this.  I had a lot on my mind.

The man seemed even more surprised than I was when I dove for his
rifle.

He sidestepped much faster than I'd thought he'd be able to and swung
the butt of the gun in a powerful arc that was going to kill me as I
stumbled by.  It stopped just before it impacted my skull, though, and
I ended up sprawled out on the asphalt unharmed.

"Good try," he said, sounding generally impressed.  I flopped over on
my back and watched him as he began moving to his right.  There was a
brief flash in his eyes when he spotted Anne and he jogged forward,
grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet.  She wasn't
fighting back this time, and I could see more tears reflected in the
fading sunlight.

When he released her and began pawing at her blood-covered chest and
stomach, I thought it was a prelude to his raping her and I started to
get to my feet.  It quickly became clear, though, that he was just
trying to figure out if she was injured.

"Don't cry, dear," he said, holding up a now-crimson hand.  "It's not
your blood."

Thirty-One.

"What the fuck is that:"

We were in a small interrogation room with two detectives, one of whom
seemed pretty angry.

Anne was sitting next to me wrapped in a blanket, squeezing my hand
beneath the table.  Stephen, the man who'd saved us, was sitting across
the table from us dipping a tea bag in a steaming cup of water.  All I
knew about him besides his name was that he'd been hired by Terracorp
to keep me safe.  The police had come screaming up the highway before
Anne or I could think clearly enough to formulate more complex
questions.

"What the fuct{ is that?"  the detective repeated.  He was a thick man,
kind of square (in shape, not personality), wearing a white dress
shirt, tan pants, and cowboy boots.

There were two unloaded rifles on the table: the one that Stephen had
been carrying when he'd run up to us and the one Detective McEntire was
pointing to.  The latter was enormous, with a black barrel about a yard
long, a ridiculously high-tech scope, and a tripod thingy (you'll have
to excuse my ignorance of firearms) that made it look like something a
Marine would shoot tanks with.

"That's a Barrett M-95," Stephen said.  "I assure you that I purchased
it legally and have a valid permit."

It seemed absurd that it could be legal to own one of these things, but
you'd swear from his casual manner that every man, woman, and child in
America had at least one lying around the house for emergencies.

"Do you have a permit to run around our country blowing people's brains
out from half a mile away?"

"That seems rather inflammatory," Stephen said evenly.  "I didn't blow
anyone's brains out.  I was simply forced to engage four men who were
attacking my client.  In the process, I regret that two of them were
killed."

McEntire leaned on the desk, supporting himself with balled fists.
""Killed,"" he repeated.  "I'd say smeared all over the pavement."

Stephen didn't react to the statement.

"He saved our lives, sir," I said.  "You saw our car.  Those guys
rammed us and started shooting with a machine gun.  If it weren't for
Stephen .. ."  I fell silent.  At the relatively young age of
thirty-two it was hard to realistically think about being dead, but I
was managing pretty well right now.

"They started shooting," McEntire said slowly.  "This is at your other
bodyguards, right?"

I nodded.  We'd already been through this.

"What happened to them?"

"They drove away," I said.

"They drove away."  He didn't seem to believe me.  "Who are they?  What
are their names?"

"I'm not sure," I said honestly.  "I think they told me when we first
met, but I just called them Blonde and Brunette.  I forgot their real
names."

Stephen laughed and continued to bob his tea bag.

"Do you have a phone number?"

"Not with me," I mumbled, sounding like I was lying, even to myself.
"Don't I get a lawyer or something?"

"You're not under arrest," McEntire said.  "Look, I recognize you from
television.  I know who you are "

I scooted back a little in my chair, and Anne gave my hand a reassuring
squeeze.

"You don't smoke, do you?"

Stephen, my guardian demon, snickered some more but remained focused
or.  getting his tea just right.

"Not anymore," McEntire said.

That answer seemed a little evasive to me.

"Look, if you know who I am, then you know that "

"What I know is that I've got two dead bodies lying right in the middle
of my jurisdiction and I'm goddamn well going to get some answers."  He
turned back to Stephen.  "What about you.  You must know these other
bodyguards.  Who are they?"

Stephen frowned.  "Cheap muscle.  Good for show and for keeping the
minor crazies away.  I have no idea where they are at this precise
moment, but I'm sure they'll surface in the next day or so and that
they'll be happy to give you a statement."

"And how are you connected to them?"

"I'm not really.  I specialize in countering more organized threats.  I
prefer to work with a lower profile."

"Reality check, here," McEntire said.  "You practically cut two people
in half in the middle of the street!  That doesn't seem low profile to
me."

Stephen shrugged, and a moment later the only door to the room swung
open.  A man who was probably in his late twenties walked in holding a
single sheet of paper in his hands.  "We got something."

"What?"  McEntire said.

"Stephen Hammond, thirty-six, British nationality.  It says he served
in the British Air Force for more than a decade but resigned a few
years back."

"The Air Force?"  McEntire said incredulously.

The younger man nodded and squinted at the page.  "Yeah.  It says
Special Air Service."

McEntire's expression darkened and he glared at Stephen, who was now
sipping his tea cautiously, apparently concerned that it might be a tad
hot.

"That's not the Air Force," McEntire said, finally.

"No?  What is it?"

"What it is, is a combination between a Navy SEAL and a coldblooded
assassin."

"Do you know who they were?"  Anne cut in, obviously sensing the
increasing tension in the room.  "The people who attacked us, I
mean."

"It could have been anybody," McEntire said.  "Take your pick:
disgruntled smokers, laid-off cigarette industry employees..."

"Don't forget farmers," the younger man cut in.  "I read yesterday that
some people in South Carolina torched a tobacco farm and by the time
the fire trucks got there, there were thirty people just standing
around breathing deeply "

"Would you mind if we didn't go through all the people who want me
dead?"  I said.  "It's kind of depressing."

The door opened again, and this time three extremely well-dressed men
rushed in.

"My clients are clearly in need of immediate medical attention! Someone
call an ambulance."  I recognized Daniel Alexander, the New York
attorney who had been so instrumental in making me look like an ass in
front of the board.

"They weren't injured," McEntire protested, trying to block the
attorneys' path to us.

"You damn well better hope not," Alexander threatened.

McEntire turned toward a balding man standing in the doorway. "Captain!
Look, they can have these two, but the other one's admitted pulling
the trigger.  I've got to at least finish getting a statement from
him."

"That's absolutely ridiculous!"  The volume of Alexander's voice rose
to a near shout.  "Mr.  Hammond is a highly decorated former soldier
who was hired by Terra to protect Mr.  Barnett.  There is absolutely no
reason to believe anything but that this was a necessary act and purely
in defense of innocent life something we'll provide additional
witnesses to corroborate."

"But " McEntire started.

"And furthermore, Mr.  Hammond is critical to the safety of my clients.
Are you prepared to provide equally qualified protection while you have
him?"

"Captain!"

"We're going to have to let them go for the time being," the man in the
doorway said.

"But, sir, he just killed two men!"

"Hold on to his passport and turn 'im loose."

"Fine," Alexander agreed.  "You'll have the additional witness
statements by tomorrow and, of course, we'll cooperate in every way
possible with your inquiry into this unfortunate event."

One of Alexander's minions grabbed me and Anne by the shoulders and
helped us to our feet.  No one seemed to want to get too close to
Stephen, so he had to get up under his own power.

The police captain stepped aside, and we were rushed through the door
and down the hall.  I kept hold of Anne's hand as we passed through the
station and out into the cool night.

There was a limousine waiting at the bottom of the steps and we headed
for it, surrounded by our battalion of lawyers.

Anne suddenly sped up, pulling me along with her and catching up with
Stephen, who was walking a few paces ahead.

"Mr.  Hammond," she said, "I don't think either of us has said it yet.
But thank you.  Thank you for saving our lives."

He smiled but didn't look at us, instead scanning the buildings across
the street.  "It was my pleasure, Anne.  And please, call me
Stephen."

Thirty-Two.

"I DON'T BELIEVE IT!"  "What?"  Anne said.  She was lying across the
car's backseat, half asleep.  We'd endured a long and silent flight
home after being released by the police.  I felt like I'd been awake
for a week, and I think Anne felt worse.

"The press," I said.

They were everywhere: The vans and cars that couldn't find a spot on my
lawn or in my flower beds were lined up along what had once been my
quiet street.  It was only six a.m."  but many of my neighbors were
standing barefoot in their dew-covered grass examining the chaos I'd
brought.  Reporters were interviewing some of them, no doubt taking
careful notes on all my failings as a neighbor and human being.

"I think you should talk to them and get it over with, don't you?"
Stephen said.  "I mean, if you put it off, they're not going to give
up.  They'll just hound you."

"Are you kidding?  Look, I'll do it, but not now, okay?  I can barely
think straight.  Tonight.  I'll do it tonight."

He tapped the brake and turned slowly into what little was still
available of my driveway as I slumped down in my seat.  "Do me this
favor, Trevor."

The breath went out of me in a long rush.  Stephen was no doubt under
strict orders from Paul Trainer not only to protect me, but also to get
me to talk to the press while I was looking my worst and most
sympathetic.  What could I say?  It's hard to refuse when a man who
just saved your life asks a favor.

"Okay, Stephen, I'll do it," I said as the car was surrounded.  "But
Anne doesn't have to talk to anybody.  Agreed?"

He nodded and stepped fearlessly into the microphone-wielding mob.
"Everyone back," I heard him say.  Miraculously, they all complied.
Apparently, word of his particular talents had spread.

Anne and I stepped out into the space Stephen had provided, and I put
an arm around her.  "Go on in.  I'll deal with the press."

Stephen shook his head.  "We all go."

I did as he said, keeping my arm around Anne as we followed him through
a corridor of loud, but surprisingly well-behaved reporters.  A young
woman with earrings that seemed too big for television tried to step in
front of us, but Stephen waved her back with a courteous, but
authoritative motion.

Although I was positive that I'd locked it, the front door was open.
Once inside, I pushed it closed with my back, sagging against it and
wishing I could crawl into bed for the next month.  But there were
bright lights emanating from my living room, so that probably wasn't
going to happen.

"They're waiting for you," Stephen said, pointing to the back of the
house.

I nodded and turned to Anne.  "You okay?"

"Sure," she said quietly.  "I'm fine."

I could hear barking coming from somewhere upstairs.  "Could you go
find Nicotine make sure they didn't lock her in a closet or
something?"

"Okay."

I slid a hand around the back of her neck and ducked down so she had to
look at me.  I could feel the soft strands of her hair brushing against
my skin.

"You're sure you're okay?"

She forced a smile, and I reached over and pushed the Play button on my
answering machine, starting the first of two messages.  I had to admit
to a mild sense of elation when Darius's voice filled the hallway.
"Man.  I just heard.  Are you all right?  Call me.  Okay?"

I wondered how he'd gotten my new number I'd changed it a couple of
days ago and given it to almost no one.  However he'd managed it, it
had to have taken a little effort.  Maybe he was regretting our last
meeting.  Realizing that our friendship

"Oh, and hey.  Let me know what's up with those smokes.  Things are
getting kind of ugly over here."

My shoulders drooped as what little strength I had left began to fade.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and listened as the second message came
on.

"Trevor!  Jesus, boy.  What can I tell you?  The world is full of
psychopaths!"  Paul Trainer's voice.  "I'm glad to hear you're all
right.  You listen to Stephen, now.  He's the best.  The best!  That's
why I hired him to keep an eye on you."

The tape beeped, and I listened to it rewind.  Neither of my parents
had called.  Guess they were busy.

Anne pressed against me from behind and leaned around so she could see
my face.  For some reason, I had the impression that she knew what I
was thinking.

When I got to the living room, I was rushed by a woman whose name was
one of those goofy alliterations local newscasters favored, but that I
couldn't remember in my present state.  She was from a station in
Greensboro and her reports, regularly picked up by the nationals, had
been pretty fair to both me and the industry so far.

"Mr.  Barnett, could you just step over here?"  she said, pushing me in
front of a bank of portable lights that hurt my eyes.

"Why don't we just start with you telling us what happened in your own
words," she said, dispensing with pleasantries in favor of
efficiency.

"Um, well, there isn't that much to tell.  I was coming back from an
interview in Montana and a truck rammed me and then these guys with
guns jumped out."

"And they fired at you, didn't they?"

"What?"  I said, having a hard time tracking on the conversation.  I
wanted to be upstairs with Anne and Nicotine.  I wanted to fall into my
bed and to forget about everything for a few hours.  It wasn't too much
to ask.

"Uh, no, they shot at my bodyguards.  They were following in another
car."

"And were they injured?"

"I don't think so.  They ran off, and I haven't seen them since."  I
was wishing now that I knew their real names so I could warn the world
against hiring them.

"But wasn't it your bodyguard who killed two of your attackers and
forced the others to retreat."

"Yeah, but it was my other bodyguard, Ste " I cut myself off when I saw
him subtly shaking his head.  "It was my other bodyguard.  Like you
said, he, uh, saved us."

"Do you know who they were?"

"I have no idea.  I'm not sure why anyone would want to kidnap me what
they think they could accomplish by that."

"Maybe they think they could use you as a bargaining chip to get
cigarettes back in the stores again," she said.

It was hard not to think about those guys mailing my body parts to
Terra along with their demands.  I could hear Paul Trainer now: "Jesus
Christ, Trevor, it's only an ear!  You've got two of them.  Quit being
such a whiner."

"I imagine they'd have been disappointed."

"How far away were you from your attackers when they were shot?"

"A few feet, I suppose."

"What was it like to see them killed so close to you?"

Honestly, I didn't know how I felt about the deaths of those men.
Granted they were probably out to kill me, but still Stephen's casual
efficiency had me a little confused.  All this was so far from anything
I'd ever experienced before.

"You have no comment," she prompted.

I shook my head.

"Do you think this is going to affect your discussions with the
anti-smoking lobby and the government?

"As far as I know, there are no discussions," I said.  "The government
is ignoring the situation, and the antismoking lobby seems to have
disappeared."

"But the economic ramifications of this shutdown are enormous.  Surely
the government will have to react."

I shrugged.  "You would think .. . Look, I almost died a few hours ago,
and I'm really tired.  I've got to cut this short.  Could y'all get out
of my house?"

"Just one more question, Mr.  Barnett.  Do you have any information on
the Ken Ewing situation?"

I knew the name, but it took me a few moments to retrieve it.  "The
manager of the manufacturing plant I spoke at?  What do you mean?"

"You haven't heard?  He was kidnapped at right around the same time you
were attacked."

I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles, wanting her out of my house more
than ever now.  "I don't know anything about it."

Nicotine, unaware of everything that had happened, barked joyfully when
I walked into the guest bedroom.  The sound of it made me feel a little
better.

"They had her shut up in here," Anne said.  "But she's okay."

I dropped to my knees and held Nicotine's head, keeping her tongue out
of striking distance and rubbing her ears.  "I was thinking maybe you
should stay here tonight, Anne.  Stephen's going to be downstairs, so
we'll be safe.  Tomorrow we can figure out what to do about your
security."

"Okay."

She was sitting on the edge of the bed in the ill-fitting jeans and
flannel shirt the police had provided after confiscating her
bloodstained clothing.

"So much for your breakthrough, huh, Trevor?"

I pressed my back against the wall and slid down to the floor.  "Maybe
it's time we rethink this, Anne."

"Rethink what?"

"This.  Everything.  What we're doing at Terra.  I mean, it was a fun
game for a while to pretend we could change the world.  By I'm not sure
it's worth dying over."

"It wasn't a game to me," she said.

I propped my head in my hands and stared down at the floor.  "Okay,
what if it isn't a game?  What if by some miracle we can change things
for the better save your proverbial one person?  I'm not sure I'm
willing to risk my life trying to help a bunch of people who can't help
themselves.  You know what?  It's not my fault that people smoke.  It's
their own goddamn fault."

"So if it's not your fault, why don't you just quit?"  There were any
number of ways I could take that sentence, and her tone didn't offer
any hints as to how she'd intended it.

"Who cares if you lose your trust?"  she continued.  "You're not making
any money off it anyway, and at this rate you're not going to live long
enough to get the distribution."

It wasn't a great job; that was for sure: Not only was I working for
perhaps the deadliest corporation in the world, my primary
responsibility was to draw fire that should have been aimed at Paul
Trainer.

"What about you?"  I said.  "There's no reason for you to stay.  You're
not even getting paid."  .

"I'm not quite ready to quit just yet."

"Are you sure they're worth it?"

"Who?"

"Smokers."

She shrugged.

"I guess whether to stay or go is the easy question," I said.

"And the hard question?"

Nicotine slid her head into my lap, and I began rubbing her neck.  "If
the press was right and I really did have Paul Trainer wrapped around
my little finger, what would we do with that power?"

A couple of minutes went by before Anne spoke again.  But she didn't
answer the question.  "I thanked Stephen, but I haven't had a chance to
thank you."

"For what?"

"For risking your life to save me."

I felt my face flush and found it impossible to meet her eye.  I
concentrated on petting Nicotine.

"So are we staying or going, Trevor?"

"Staying, I guess."

She dug a few loose pieces of paper from her purse and held them out to
me.  "Then it's time to start playing the game like we're trying to
win."

"What's that?"

"The phone records from your father's office."

"How'd you get those?"  I said, leaning further back into the wall
instead of reaching for them.

"It doesn't really matter, does it?  Take them."

I did, albeit hesitantly, and focused on two highlighted numbers that I
didn't recognize.

"The first call is to Angus Scalia a couple of hours before you went on
TV with him.  The second is a fax to his office."

After everything that had happened today, this wasn't what I needed.

"Trevor?"

"What?"  I said, loud enough that even Nicotine gave me a sideways
glance.  "Is this supposed to mean something?  My father could have
been calling him to tell him he was going to sue him for slander or a
thousand other things."

"He could have been, but he wasn't."

Thirty-Three.

"So HOW ARE YOU?"  ANNE SAID.

Stephen stopped the car next to the elevator in Terra's underground
parking lot and glanced down at himself as though he was looking for
some hidden injury.  "I'm very well, thank you.  In fact, my wife and
daughter are flying in this afternoon.  They'll be here for the next
few days, and then they're going to drive to the Grand Canyon.  It's
their first visit to America."

It was uncanny.  Actually, spooky might be a better word.  I'd
initially dismissed the man's nonchalance as an act a display of the
Clint East-woodesque demeanor expected of a former commando.  But it
wasn't that.  And it wasn't evil (an idea I'd flirted with briefly). He
really felt no guilt or remorse over the men he'd killed.  He'd done
what he'd done and honestly didn't seem interested in soul-searching or
second-guessing.  I could learn a lot from this man.

"You're sure," Anne said and waited for his slightly perplexed nod
before stepping from the car.  I followed her without saying anything
at all to him.  The truth was that Stephen made me a little
uncomfortable.  Well, not him per se.  More that this brutal assassin
was one of the few people I'd met over the last few weeks who I kind of
liked.

There was a lot of showy concern and back patting when we ca rae
through the glass doors of the executive floor.  Secretaries stood
behind their desks, executives wandered out of their offices.  Even the
coffee cart guy stopped and nodded respectfully.  Neither of us
reacted, other than to lower our heads and walk faster.  When we
arrived at my office, there was an enormous flower arrangement on
Anne's desk with a card from Paul Trainer.  I didn't ask what it
said.

There were no flowers on my desk just a note saying to join Trainer in
his office ASAP.

I pushed through the door connecting our offices and saw that a meeting
was already in progress.  Trainer was talking quietly to a man I didn't
recognize and seemed oblivious to my arrival.  My father, on the other
hand, strode across the floor and gave me a big bear hug.  I flopped my
hands around his back, but we were both aware that it was all just for
show.

It seemed certain to me now that my father had called Daniel Alexander
in Montana and told him to give me misinformation so that I'd crash in
front of the board.  And when that hadn't had the desired effect, he'd
faxed a copy of my trust to Angus Scalia in an effort to torpedo my
first national television appearance.

I should have been furious.  I should have stepped back and decked him,
then blamed it on post-traumatic stress.  But I really wasn't all that
mad.  If anything, I felt kind of sorry for him which is probably the
worst way you can feel about your father.

Parenthood had many noble traits, but one of the greatest was the hope
that your child would surpass your successes.  The jealously and
competitiveness that my father felt toward me had always been sad, but
now it seemed downright pathetic.  Pathetic and dangerous.

"Are you all right, son?  How are you feeling?"

"Real tired, Dad."  We gratefully released each other.  "But I'm
okay."

Trainer was next.  Finished with his conversation, he nearly ran across
the office to frantically pump my hand.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am that you're okay, Trevor.  I
understand you showed incredible courage.  Incredible!  I really admire
your fortitude in the face of all the death threats and lawsuits
against you."

"What death threats and lawsuits?"

"Have you seen the press on this?"  he said, ignoring my question and
pointing to a stack of newspapers on his desk.  "It's been excellent!
Mark my words, son.  We're going to win this thing."

He wrapped an arm around me, and we turned away from my father and the
other man.  "Now, what's with all that stuff you said about negotiating
with the anti tobacco people and cigarettes causing unpleasant deaths?
I know that son of a bitch Ivers is tough and that we need to play up
this benevolence angle for the public, but you're going to need to talk
to me before you say anything like that in the future.  No need to go
off the deep end, here.  Understood?"

He clearly wanted an answer, but I ducked out from beneath his arm and
started flipping through the newspapers on his desk.  There were a few
obligatory articles implying that it would have been no great loss to
the world if I'd been killed but overall, I'd come out of this thing
looking pretty good.  At this rate, it wouldn't be long before both I
and the tobacco industry would soon achieve full antihero status.

"Trevor?"  I heard Trainer say.  I looked up slowly, waiting for him to
try to get me to acknowledge his directive again.  To my surprise, he
didn't press the issue.

"I want to introduce you to Dr.  Gregory Miller."

I crossed the floor and shook the man's hand, searching my mind for the
familiar name.  It came to me a moment later.  Miller was a former CIA
executive who did consulting work for Terracorp from time to time.

"It's nice to meet you, Trevor.  I'm hearing a lot of good things."

He had dark circles beneath his eyes and a long, thin build magnified
by jacket sleeves that were a little too short.  Basically, he looked
the way you'd expect someone with his background to look.

"Greg here is the one who recommended Stephen," Trainer explained.

"Thank you for that," I said.  "Without Stephen, I wouldn't be standing
here."

Paul Trainer pointed to the conversation pit at the edge of his office,
and we all sat.

"What are we hearing from the police?"  I asked no one in particular.

Miller answered.  "They haven't been able to identify the dead men yet:
no prints on record, and most of the phone tips the FBI's received are
just crank calls."

"What about the two men who got away?"

"As near as anyone can tell, they just disappeared into thin air."

Ken Ewing

"The police have even less on that a couple of witnesses, but no
physical evidence to speak of."

"So basically we don't know anything."

"I didn't say that," Miller said.  "You asked me what we were hearing
from the police."

Trainer spoke up.  "We suspect that both attacks were planned and
executed by Serbian terrorists.  The cops'll figure it out eventually
through Interpol, but they're not there yet."

Miller nodded.  "The Serbs get a lot of their financing from cigarette
smuggling, and you've cut them off from that income.  We've been
keeping our eye on them, as well as other organizations like Hamas who
are heavily dependent on smuggling income ..."

I kept my expression passive, but my mind was busy sifting through the
information I was being given.  Cigarette smuggling essentially buying
in places with low taxes on cigarettes and selling in place with high
taxes was a multibillion-dollar industry that quietly accounted for
almost ten percent of Terra's sales worldwide.  It was also an activity
that was subtly encouraged by tobacco industry management, who were
more than happy to see their products made available at competitive
prices all over the world.  Undoubtedly it was our loose connection to
these smugglers, and not Miller's brilliant detective work, that made
it possible for us to be one step ahead of the authorities.

The attempt on my life and the kidnapping of Ken Ewing by foreign
terrorists were giving Trainer an opportunity to rewrap the tobacco
industry in the flag it had worn for so many years.  Were the attacks
just a circumstance that he was exploiting, or was it more than that?
Was a decision about whether Ewing would be martyred or heroically
rescued being made by our marketing department?

The fact that I had been saved (and made available for interviews a few
hours later) didn't bode well for Ewing's future.  The media needed new
angles to keep things fresh and to keep people tuned in.

"What's going on with the Italians?"  Trainer asked.

"The Mafia is by far the most sophisticated of the smuggling
organizations, and that means they're smart enough to realize there's
nothing they can do about this.  They've got substantial cash reserves,
and they're going to spend their money and energy maintaining their
power base while this thing shakes out."

"What do the Serbs want?"  I asked.  "Do they think we're going to do
an about-face because they're holding one of our plant managers?"

"I doubt it.  More likely we'll get a ransom request."

"How much?"  Trainer said.

"A lot.  But I'm guessing they'll ask for cigarettes instead of cash
they need to keep their infrastructure in place and keep their
competitors from trying to move in with Eastern Bloc or Asian stuff.
Obviously, if this is the case, it'll make our lives easier."

It didn't seem obvious to me.  "How so?"

Miller looked at me over his glasses, and my father followed suit.
"Because it makes it possible to anticipate the mechanics of the
exchange, Trevor.  Cigarettes in the number they're going to want can't
exactly be transported in a briefcase.  The only way I can think of to
work this would be to take a ship out into international waters and
make the exchange there."

"Why do we care where it takes place?"  I asked.  "Shouldn't we be
telling the FBI about all this?  I mean, shouldn't they be here right
now?"

"Relax, Trevor," Trainer said, leaning forward and patting my knee.
"We're going about this in the most efficient way possible."

Miller stood and offered Trainer his hand.  "If there isn't anything
else, Paul, I should get back to work."

"Thanks, Greg.  Stay in touch on this, okay?"

Miller disappeared through the door and before I could say anything,
Xavier Rork, the director of marketing, came in.  He didn't sit.

"How are we doin', Xavier?"  Trainer asked.

"Things couldn't be better, Mr.  Trainer."  He nodded toward me.  "A
young, good-looking American man and his attractive assistant attacked
in our heartland.  We've leaked that we believe foreign terrorists are
behind it, which obviously strikes a chord.  The press is loving it."

"What about the tape?"

"Tape?"  I said.

"Stephen had a video camera on his dash," Trainer explained.  "Kind of
like a police cruiser."

"There's... There's a tape?"

"Didn't I just say that?"  He held a finger to his lips and pointed to
Rork, who continued.

"We had our guys magnify and enhance it the distance was fairly
substantial ..."

"Were we able to get a decent picture?"  my father asked.

"Better than you'd think," Rork said, sounding a little unsure.

"And?"  Trainer said.

"Frankly, we don't think it's appropriate."

"Why not?"

"Well ... Let's just say your man was a little too effective.  It plays
like an execution.  All our psychologists agree that it would backfire
on us.  You know, associate us with killing ..."

Trainer nodded thoughtfully.  "That's a damn shame.  But, what'll you
do, huh?"

"Give it to the police?"  I suggested.

He grinned as if I'd made a joke that wasn't all that funny.  "They'd
just leak it, son."

"What about Stephen?  I can tell you that the Montana police don't seem
to like him."

Trainer waved a hand dismissively.  "They don't have shit.  And if they
start making a lot of trouble, we'll suddenly find the tape.  But
they're not going to.  There are four witnesses and enough physical
evidence to fill a dump truck."  He turned his attention back to Rork.
"What about Ewing?"

"That's working out even better.  He has a fantastic background: born
to poor tobacco farmers, no college education, moving up from
assembly-line worker to plant manager through sweat and elbow grease ..
. He couldn't have been more appealing if he'd been handpicked."

I played that statement over again in my head: He couldn't have been
more appealing if he'd been handpicked.

"We've put out a press packet on him, and his wife agreed to do
interviews.  Have you seen her on TV yet?  I'll send you up a tape.
She's a lovely woman, understandably distraught.  We're moving forward
with the angle that terrorists are trying to take control of this
country but that we're not going to let them.  The message is subtle,
of course.  It's easy to go over the top with something like that, so
we're trying to keep it low-key."

"Did you see the front page of the Times today ?"

Rork smiled widely.  "That's the start of something.  The Times isn't
the only paper starting to focus on the fact that the government's
actions regarding tobacco don't exactly jibe with what they say.
Hypocrisy is a message we're going to keep hammering on."

Trainer nodded.  "Keep it up, Xavier.  You're the lead here.  It's all
up to you."

"Yes, sir," Rork said, performing a sort of military about-face and
heading for the door.  I watched him go, wondering what Ewing would
think if he knew he was nothing more than a circus freak and his wife
and kids were the hawkers.

Step right up now ... "And speaking of the government," Trainer said,
"guess who called me this morning?"

He didn't wait for an answer.  "That pissantj the White House chief of
staff."

"What did he say?"  my father asked.

"I don't know.  I didn't take his call.  I wanted the day's press to
get out and saturate a little bit before talking to him.  Let him stew
a little while."

Thirty-Four.

I'd been on a White House tour back when I was in high school, and the
only thing I could remember was feeling small and disconnected like
none of it had anything to do with me.

Things were different now.  It was hard to feel anything but awe as we
followed our pretty escort through the historic hallways.  I was going
to meet with the president of the United States a man who had the same
job as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.  The
most powerful man in the world.

I carefully examined vases, rugs, light fixtures, paintings even the
elaborate molding so that I could remember every detail.  So that
someday I could tell anyone who'd listen about my trip to meet the
president.

"Did you vote for Anderson?"  I whispered into Paul Trainer's ear.

"I don't vote," he boomed.  "It just encourages the bastards."

By the time we stepped into the Oval Office, I'd spent the better part
of an hour rehearsing my greeting.  "Nice to meet you, sir" seemed too
common.  "A pleasure to meet you, sir" wasn't quite right, either, for
some reason.  I'd settled on "An honor to meet you, Mr.  President."

I was surprised when our guide excused herself and left us standing in
the middle of the room alone.  Trainer stood with bored impatience,

whereas I stood on my tiptoes trying to see what was on the desk.
Attack plans for China?  The latest data on a new terrorist threat?
Information on Russian spies?

"Paul!"  the president said, striding through a door to our left. "It's
good to see you."

"Mr.  President," Trainer said, calmly shaking the man's hand.  "I'd
like to introduce you to Trevor Barnett, my strategy guru."

I subtly wiped the sweat from my palm and shook the hand of the
president of the United States.  His grip wasn't overpowering and his
hand was surprisingly small, but there was an incredible presence to
him.  Or maybe it was just the setting.

"It's nice to meet you, Trevor.  I'm glad to see you're okay."

"Me too, sir," I fumbled.

He turned his back on me and put a hand on Trainer's shoulder, leading
him to some chairs and a sofa set up in the middle of the office.  I
had the distinct impression that I'd already been forgotten.  Clearly,
Anderson had instantly seen through the diversion Trainer had
constructed and instinctively knew what surprisingly few other people
seemed to grasp: I was just a powerless figurehead.  Whether that made
him a brilliant man or just a brilliant politician was hard to say.

I took the least comfortable seat in the grouping because it seemed
like I should.  Anderson opted to just lean against a desk that I had
read once belonged to JFK.

"Any word on Ken Ewing?"

"I guess the FBI is working the case, but they haven't told us anything
yet," Trainer said.  My heart rate rose a bit as I listened to him
calmly withhold information from the president, and for a moment I
wondered if there were devices that could measure that reaction.

"If there are any problems with the Bureau if you feel like you aren't
getting everything you need from them I want you to come to me
directly, Paul."

"Thank you, Mr.  President."

There were a few seconds of silence before Anderson spoke again.

"How did we get here, Paul?  This administration, and frankly every
administration for the last fifteen years, has been nothing but
supportive of the tobacco industry.  And now you're running around
threatening us."

"That's not true, sir."

I assumed that Trainer was referring to the implication that he was
threatening.  Stupid me.

"The federal government has been subtly chipping away at the tobacco
industry for years sometimes overtly by supporting suits and speaking
out against us.  Sometimes quietly by standing silent while we're
attacked.  In my mind, our relationship's become a little one-sided:
You take billions of dollars from us every year and then turn around
and treat us like criminals."

I held my breath, but no anger showed on Anderson's face.  What Trainer
had said was completely true but, as convoluted as it was, it was the
natural order of things.  His our recent actions had moved the
government from their very comfortable position on the subject to one
that was extremely delicate and more than a little dangerous.  It was
hard for Anderson to jump up and down in support of the return of
cigarettes, but equally hard for him to ignore the tens of thousands of
people out of work, the millions who wanted their cigarettes back, and
the billions in potential lost revenue.  Then there was the
skyrocketing rate of petty crime and violence.  I'd heard (but couldn't
corroborate) that the producers of Cops were getting so much footage
they'd had to hire college film students to keep up.

"What do you want, Paul?  How do we make this go away?"

"I think you know the answer to that.  We want legislation that will
kill the lawsuits, we want a cap on taxes.  Every time the government
can't balance its checkbook or some politician starts feeling
sanctimonious, we take the hit.  A pack in New York costs over seven
dollars, for God's sake."

"And how do you suggest I accomplish that, Paul?  The Labeling Act is
already in place."

What he was referring to was the Federal Cigarette Labeling and
Advertising Act, which stated that warning labels had to appear on all
cigarette packs, that they could be altered only by Congress, that they
were sufficient, and that no one could sue arguing they weren't.
Unfortunately, just about everyone found it convenient to ignore that
law.

"Have you seen this?"  Trainer said, pulling from his pocket a graphic
photo of a human mouth rotting from cancer.  "The Justice Department is
suing to force us to add this picture to the government warning.  So
essentially the federal government is using civil action to coerce us
to break federal law.  Labeling and Advertising isn't cutting it, Mr.
President.  We want something ironclad."

"No one wants a showdown on this right now, Paul."

"No.  No one does.  But I'm about to lose a
two-hundred-and-fifty-billion dollar suit that I'm going to have to
settle.  Where's it all going to end?"

"What do you want me to do, Paul?  Completely revise the legal system?
Threaten jurors?  Make you above the law?"

"I want you to put meaningful legislation in place that will protect us
from frivolous suits both from the public and the government and I want
you to stand behind it.  We agreed to settle with the states even
though we could have won in the courts, because we were promised
relief.  And then the government just walked away from that promise."

"Before my time, Paul.  I had nothing to do with that."

"That's the way of politics, though, isn't it, Mr.  President?  The men
in power do what's in their best interest at the time and the men down
the line pay for it."

I was thankful to have been forgotten.  While President Anderson was
the picture of calm, and everything Trainer was saying was true, I
wasn't sure it was wise to talk to the most powerful man in the world
quite so directly.

"We're all victims of the political climate we live in, Paul."

"And the political climate wasn't right at the time of the settlement
to offer us meaningful protection.  I understand that.  That's why
we're working so hard to change the climate.  In the past, smokers have
tended to vote in lower numbers than nonsmokers.  That's one of the
things we're changing.  I think that if this isn't resolved by Election
Day, you're going to see smokers turn out in droves.  It should make
for an interesting outcome."

Anderson blinked a few times.  "Another threat, Paul?"

"Absolutely not, sir.  I'm just telling you exactly what your campaign
manager probably told you two hours ago."

"Goddamnit, Paul!"  Anderson said, the volume of his voice rising for
the first time.  "You sit here and talk to me like Terra's selling tofu
and wheat germ.  You've killed millions and lied through your teeth
about it."

"Yes, sir.  That's true.  The question is what's the government going
to do about it?"

Anderson glanced over at me, but I looked away before I could see the
anger on his face.

"Why now, Paul?  And don't tell me it's Montana.  By the time that
precedent comes to roost, you and I will both be long gone.  Why make
all this trouble now?"

Trainer leaned back in his chair, a concerned expression suddenly
taking over his wrinkled face.  "It's not about the money, Mr.
President.  It's about the fact that despite every effort, no one seems
to be able to figure out that cigarettes are bad for them.  We need to
satisfy ourselves that everyone understands the risks and accepts them
in an informed way."

"Give me a break, Paul."

The more time I spent with Trainer the more I began to suspect that
this was about nothing more than proving to himself that he was still a
powerful, vital man.  To make his mark on history before it was too
late.

"This is a no-win situation for me, Paul.  I've got plenty on my plate
without you playing these kinds of games."

"I disagree, Mr.  President.  I think that helping us is a no-lose
situation for you.  Smokers want their cigarettes back and nonsmokers
overwhelmingly believe that adults should be able to do what they want
in their own homes."

Anderson nodded toward me.  "Your man here said that you'd be willing
to make some concessions to get protection.  What did you have in
mind?"

Trainer pursed his old lips for a moment, probably cursing me
silently.

"We'll build an information campaign around the idea that this is a
choice you make and there's no one to blame but yourself, and we'll
work hard to get that message into schools.  Hell, we're paying six
hundred million a year on attorney fees we can put at least some of our
savings into getting the word out.  I've got to think that it would be
a more popular use of the money than paying a bunch of bloodsucking
attorneys."

Anderson laughed.  "And let me guess: That money would be deducted from
what you pay attorneys, so if you continued to have high legal fees,
the campaign would never materialize."

"I think that seems fair," Trainer said.

"And I assume you'd want your marketing department to design the
campaign .. ."

"Obviously, we'd entertain input from outside people."

"The goal being to make it as ineffective as possible.  Maybe ads where
a bunch of stodgy old people scold kids through the TV.  If you're
clever enough you might even be able to design something that actually
increases teen smoking."

Trainer shrugged.  "We're all adults here.  Of course, we're going to
use this as an opportunity to sell our product that's how we make
money.  And as you recall, that's how you make money, too.  What's
important is that we can make the anti tobacco people think they won
and make the public think you made a good deal."

Anderson nodded thoughtfully.  "Put your people back to work, Paul.  I
agree with you this is something that's going to have to be dealt with.
But not by us.  Let the next generation get bloodied in this fight."

"I can't do that, sir."

Anderson walked around his desk and sat.  He obviously understood that
Trainer wasn't going to back down.

"Okay, Paul.  Fine.  You win.  You've proved your resolve and you've
made your point.  Send your people back to work, and I'll set up a task
force to start putting together some legislation."

"Last time I heard that and I realize it wasn't from you I paid a
quarter of a billion and got nothing in return.  My people stay where
they are."

Anderson let the calm facade he'd constructed crumble, and what was
left was raw enough that it had me imagining government assassins
sneaking up behind me with piano wire.  I wanted to say something to
distance myself from Trainer but I was too intimidated to speak.

"Goddamnit, Paul!  You're going to send both your company and yourself
down the toilet!  For one second, could you just think about what
you're doing and the people you're pissing off?"

Trainer stood and nodded respectfully toward Anderson.  "I appreciate
your time, Mr.  President."

When we walked out of there, Trainer was grinning from ear to ear and
almost shaking with excitement.  He'd just strong-armed the leader of
the free world.  For a man too old for sex, drugs, and rock and roll,
it was the ultimate rush.  I, on the other hand, felt like I was going
to throw up.

Thirty-Five.

I WAS IN THE PASSENGER SEAT, BEING DRIVEN THROUGH my neighborhood by a
guy who looked like an unsuccessful former boxer.  Stephen was nowhere
to be found, and I kept telling myself that he was spending time with
his family and that this wasn't an indication that I was being set up
(again?).  I felt a little better when we rounded the corner and my
house came into view, despite the three television vans still parked
along the curb.  I hung my arm out the window, using it to direct a
flow of humid air across my face.  I'm embarrassed to say that I still
hadn't stopped sweating from my meeting with the president six hours
ago.

"When are we going to get some peace and quiet?"

I glanced over and saw the old lady who lived four doors down from me
standing in her yard shaking her fist at me.  Seriously, shaking her
fist.  She'd been a complete pain in the ass ever since I'd moved in,
once yelling at me because Nicotine barked through the door at her
poodle every evening when she brought it to shit on my lawn.  Even so,
I'd always been unfailingly polite.  Today I flipped her off.

"Straight into the garage," I said to my battered driver.  A few
reporters jogged up alongside the car, but they didn't seem all that
fired up today.  One had a cigarette in his mouth, and I wondered where
he'd gotten it.

There were two messages on my machine.  The first, from Lawrence Mann,
said simply, "I heard you met with Anderson.  Call me."  The second was
from Anne and was even less verbose.  "So how'd it go with the prez?"

Nicotine bounded out of the living room and began rubbing against the
legs of my dark slacks, leaving them covered with white hair.  I knelt
and put her in a playful headlock.

"You know what I did today, Nicky?  I pissed off the president."

She broke free, as she always did, but instead of counterattacking she
just sat down and cocked her head.

"That's right," I said.  "He's probably organizing a death squad right
now."

I dialed the number Mann left, listening to it ring as I headed for the
kitchen to get something to eat.

"This is Mann."

"Larry.  Trevor Barnett returning your call."

"How are you, Trevor?  You're okay, right?  And your assistant?"

Out of all the people who'd asked that question, he was the only one who
sounded like he cared about the answer.  Sure, it was probably just a
carefully constructed facade, but at least he had the decency to
pretend.

"We're both fine, thanks.  A little shaken up, but neither of us got
hurt."

"I'm happy to hear that.  So what happened with Anderson?"

"I don't think I'm supposed to be talking about that."

"Give it to me in broad strokes."

"I don't think anything was resolved."

"Trainer shot his mouth off, and Anderson got his back up."

"You said it; I didn'j:."

"Right."

"How are things going for you, Larry?"

"It could be worse.  The banks are being friendly tobacco is their
bread and butter.  That, combined with the aid the company's providing,
means my people aren't suffering too badly.  Not yet, anyway."

"Have you been able to catch the people pilfering smokes from our
warehouses?"

He laughed.  "No, but we're working on it.  I'll keep you posted.  Did
you see the news ?"

"Huh uh."

"That schoolteacher the one from the Montana suit?  She came out today
in that wheelchair with the oxygen tank on it, and a bunch of people
started booing her."  ,

"You're kidding," I said, genuinely disgusted.

"I'm not.  The mood of the country's getting downright weird.  Even I'm
avoiding going out in public.  I'm not sure from one minute to the next
if I'm going to get patted on the back or shot in it."

"Tell me about it."

"I met with Senator Randal today.  He blew a bunch of smoke about how
he'd laid the groundwork for your meeting with the president.  That
he's going to get us back to work."

"Truthfully, I think this has gone way beyond Randal.  I wouldn't put a
lot of faith in his ability to do anything right now."

"I'm not.  I'm putting my faith in you."

I laughed.  "That's even dumber."

"I don't think so.  Move this thing, Trevor.  Okay?"

My bodyguard suddenly appeared in the doorway to the kitchen and
started motioning frantically for me to come with him.  I ducked my
head involuntarily.  "Shit.  Larry, I gotta go."

I ran after the painfully slow man, expecting to be headed for cover.
Instead, he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me through the front
door.  We successfully negotiated the reporters on my lawn and ran
toward a limousine parked by the curb.  It started pulling away when I
was still only halfway inside.

"You have to be having fun now!"

I'd landed in a less than dignified position on the floor and I pushed
myself to my knees, then into the seat across from Trainer.

"Got something interesting to show you, son."

"Come on, Paul," I said, brushing dust and dog hair from my pants.  "I
just got home.  Take me back."

"Too late!  We're on the move!"

I glanced out the back window and then twisted around and looked past
the driver out the front.  We seemed to be at the center of a five-car
motorcade.

"I think we found Ken Ewing," Trainer continued.  "Miller was right.
The bastards want cigarettes.  They set up an exchange a couple of
hundred miles offshore."

"Have you called the FBI?"

"No time," he said, grinning wildly.  "We're going to have to handle
this ourselves."

Thirty-Six.

The precise moment when my job description changed from hapless
industry spokesperson to hapless military operative, I wasn't sure.

Trainer's limo had taken us to the airport where we'd boarded the jet,
then a helicopter, and now we were sitting in an enormous rubber raft
with a nearly silent motor.  The smooth glide of the craft suggested
calm seas, but I couldn't visually confirm that.  We were a few hundred
miles off some unknown coast beneath a heavy layer of clouds that
completely blocked out the moon and stars.  It was an utterly perfect,
completely balance-robbing, panic-inducing darkness that I'd never
experienced before.  I gripped a rope in front of me, though it was
impossible to know if the other end was tied to anything, and tried to
come to terms with my temporary blindness.

Paul Trainer was sitting next to me, and there were a number of other
executives lined up on the wood benches behind us.  Everyone was
completely still and silent, heeding orders of the quietly
dangerous-looking man who had helped us board and who, I assumed, was
now at the controls of the outboard.

We sat there for a long time, occasionally getting splashed by waves
breaking over the bow, but mostly just moving steadily forward through
the blackness.  Half an hour?  An hour?  Even time seemed distorted by
the darkness.  Eventually, though, I began to make out a distant glow
that was so dim it disappeared if I looked directly at it.  The quiet
hum of the motor deepened a bit when we got close enough to pick out
the profile of a medium-sized yacht.

A few minutes later, we pulled alongside, and the now-visible man
piloting the raft lashed it to a ladder that he then quickly ascended.
Two crewmen appeared a moment later and began helping us on board no
small task considering the average age and smoking habits of the other
men in the raft.  I have to say, though, that Trainer dragged his old
bones up that ladder with the energy of a man on a temporary reprieve
from death and determined to enjoy every minute of it.

There were five of us, not including our escorts, and none of us spoke
as we were led along the barely lit deck and down a set of gloomy
stairs.  I had to shade my eyes when the door at the end of the
corridor opened and we were ushered into a spacious room filled with
soothing classical music and tables covered with elaborate hors
d'oeuvres.  There were no less than ten men already there, some
familiar to me, others not.  My father was grazing on some stuffed
mushrooms in the corner.

"Paul!  How was the trip?"  Gregory Miller said, striding toward us to
take Trainer's hand.  "We can't get a helicopter in this close it'd be
seen.  Was the raft all right?  Fairly calm seas tonight."

"No problems, Greg," Trainer said.  "Smooth sailing all the way."

"Excellent."

Miller stepped back and clapped to get everyone's attention.  "Now that
we're all here, I'd like to explain a little about our operation
tonight."  My father stabbed a few pieces of smoked salmon and got his
vodka tonic freshened before rejoining the group.  He didn't look at
me.

"As most of you know, we received a ransom call from the men who
kidnapped Ken Ewing, and it was more or less what we expected.  They
did ask for money, but primarily they were interested in product to
keep their smuggling lines from collapsing.  Also as predicted, they
demanded that we steam a freighterful of cigarettes into international
waters for a rendezvous tomorrow afternoon at which time they plan to
board it and I

sail it to an unknown port.  With the knowledge of that rendezvous
location and time, it was a small matter to locate the terrorists'
vessel.  It's currently about twenty-five miles from our position,
bearing down on us at fifteen knots."

That got a quiet murmur' going and I looked back to see the worried
expressions of the men behind me.  When I faced front again, Miller was
gesturing for calm.  "No need to worry.  They have no idea we're here,
and they're not going to get anywhere near us.  We have a team, led by
a former SAS man, preparing to intercept."

My disappearing bodyguard, I assumed.  Apparently, Stephen wasn't
spending a few precious hours with his family; he was sitting in the
middle of the ocean preparing to board a boatful of heavily armed
Serbs.

"How?"  someone behind me said.

"With the same type of raft you came in on.  We've been able to get a
schematic of the Serbs' boat and created an optimal plan to board and
rescue Mr.  Ewing.  I'll go over that plan in a few minutes..."  He
motioned to a row of televisions bolted to the wall.  "And we'll have a
direct feed from the team's headset cameras, making it possible to
watch the entire operation."

That got another murmur from the peanut gallery.

I was surprised when no one stopped me from wandering off during the
brief intermission meant to give Miller's aging audience time to avail
themselves of the facilities and sample the chicken satays while they
were still hot.  I went up on deck, walking carefully along it and
listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the sea.  The only boat I'd ever
been on had been a thirty-five-foot sailboat Darius owned during his
very brief "chicks dig sailing" phase.  He'd turned green and thrown up
over the railing while we were still tied to the dock.

This was a little different.  Instead of girls in bikinis, exotic
drinks, and a nice solid plank leading to a nice, solid dock, all there
was was silence and emptiness.  I leaned out over the cold, slippery
railing and tried to find something anything in the darkness.

When it became clear that there was nothing to find, I continued my
circumnavigation of the boat in an effort to avoid going back down with
Trainer and the others.  I was almost back to where I'd begun when I
came upon a small, utilitarian hatch in the deck.  I confirmed that
there was no one watching and then gave it a try.  It opened easily,
and there was enough of a glow coming from inside to see a ladder
leading down.

I tried to convince myself to go back to the party but instead found
myself climbing down the ladder and closing the hatch above my head.

The floor was about ten feet down, and when I got there I could see
that what little light there was was coming from beneath a door at the
end of a narrow corridor lined with pipes and electronics.

I couldn't really hear anything as I started forward but I could see
motion in the light at my feet, suggesting someone was on the other
side.  It wasn't hard to guess who.

I was about halfway to the door when it finally occurred to me that I
shouldn't be down there.  I was about to turn around when I felt
something round, cold, and metal press against the base of my skull.
Sadly, the sensation of gun barrel on skin was becoming kind of
familiar to me.

"Just stand very still," I heard the man behind me say.

Where he came from, I have no idea.  There seemed to be only the one
door, and I surely would have heard him climbing down the ladder behind
me.

"I'm Trevor Barnett!  I "

Before I could get the rest of my explanation out, the door in front of
me opened and partially blinded me.

"No, no!  It's all right!"

I recognized Stephen's unlikely British lilt immediately.

The gun withdrew, but I still didn't move.

"Trevor.  Nice of you to visit.  Come in."

When I still didn't budge, Stephen's black-painted face broke into a
bright white smile.  "It's okay, Trevor.  Come in."

None of the other men in the room seemed to notice when I entered,
focusing instead on checking and rechecking the weapons lined up on the
floor.  Everything was much more compact than the enormous gun Stephen
had saved me and Anne with.  Tiny machine guns, grenades, knives, a
crossbow ... Seriously, a crossbow.

"I take it you're not going to the Grand Canyon," I said.

Stephen shook his head sadly.  "I'm afraid I had to let them go on
their own.  Is there something we can do for you, Trevor?"

I didn't answer.

"Trevor?"

"They have hors d'oeurves," I heard myself say.

He laughed.  "What?"

"They ... They were bringing out those little quiches when I left."

His expression melted into one of understanding, causing the black
stripes on his face to bend subtly.  "It's not important."

"Yes it is.  Doesn't it bother you that they're going to sit around and
have cocktails while you kill people and maybe get killed yourself?"

He put an arm around me and began leading me back to the ladder.  The
man who'd snuck up behind me had disappeared again.

"Do you think it was any different when I did it for queen and country?
"

"But what about your family?"  I said.  "What about your daughter?"

"They'll be well provided for if something happens to me.  Paul Trainer
has been very generous in that way."

"I didn't mean money."

I couldn't see his expression anymore too much paint and not enough
light.  But he stopped at the base of the ladder and stood very still
for a moment.  "Maybe she'd find a father who was home more?  One who's
there to play tea party and help her with her homework?  Maybe it
wouldn't matter to her."

Back in college, whenever I hauled myself out of bed after a
particularly impressive bender, I'd always ask myself the same thing:
Am I

crazy?  Later, I started asking that question every morning no matter
what it seemed to be an important thing to monitor, though I'd never
come up with a good answer.  Now I thought I finally had one.  Probably
not, but everyone around me was completely certifiable.

The TV monitors were still dark, but everyone was staring at them
anyway.  Chairs had been set up and I was sitting on Paul Trainer's
left, with Gregory Miller on his right.  Miller continued to explain
the operation how Stephen and his men would board as stealthily as
possible, how they would try to quickly and quietly incapacitate
Ewing's captors so as not to endanger him.  I tried to reconcile the
word incapacitate with the equipment I'd seen Stephen's men sorting
through, but couldn't quite lie to myself that energetically.

I thought about the Serbs' recent history of atrocities and what they
might have done to me and Anne if Stephen hadn't intervened, but I
still couldn't help feeling sorry for them.  And I couldn't help
feeling partially responsible for what was about to happen.

The monitors came to life as Stephen and his men scaled the side of the
ship a silent, shaky picture of mostly shadows and angles.

I'd love to paint what happened next in bold, heroic colors; to
describe explosions and desperate hand-to-hand combat to say that
Stephen and his men made every effort to complete their mission without
bloodshed.  But that's not what happened.

Those narrow, quivering pictures showed men drinking coffee, playing
cards, sleeping, shaving.  Then there would be the elongated shadow of
a black-painted blade and the slow grace of a lifeless body being
gently lowered to the deck.

The monitor labeled Stephen reminded me of one of Darius's video games
and I felt a familiar rolling sensation in my stomach as the camera
moved down a claustrophobic staircase with the barrel of a gun
bisecting the screen.

They found Ewing sitting on the floor in the center of a small room,
his hands bound behind him.  There was another man in the room, too,
and he charged only to be floored by a blow to the face from the butt
of Stephen's gun.  His predicament was made more permanent when Stephen
separated his vertebrae with a practiced motion of his knife.

I was feeling pretty ill by the time Ewing was freed.  I saw him stand,
rub his wrists, and move his mouth in a silent thanks.  I didn't watch
the rest.

Thirty-Seven.

Still trying to put the events of last night out of my head, I pushed a
few extra buttons on the elevator, causing it to stop randomly as it
rose from Terra's underground parking garage.  I stood passively at the
back as the doors opened onto the silent, empty floors and then slid
closed again.

When I finally got off, I saw that there were two new guards on either
side of the thick glass protecting the executive reception area.  They
watched my approach, no doubt wondering about my untucked shirttail,
wrinkled slacks, and missing tie, then used a punch pad to unlock the
door.

"Trevor, where have you been?"  Anne whispered loudly after jumping up
from her desk and grabbing hold of my arm.  "Are you all right?"

I think she looked beautiful, but I can't remember for sure.

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine.  Where were you last night?  I stayed up 'til
midnight, but you never came home."

"You don't want to know."

Normally, there would have been no way she'd accept that answer, but on
this particular day she just scrunched her eyebrows together and
changed the subject.  "Did you meet the president?"

I nodded.

She let me go, and I could feel her eyes on me as I walked into my
office and closed the door behind me.

Three weeks ago I'd had a stable job, the illusion of friends, a
position at Smokeless Youth that kept my soul from going completely
black, and a woman that I futilely chased to keep my life from seeming
like it just went around in circles.  Everything had been going along
so ... evenly.

"Trevor!  You watching this, boy?"  Paul Trainer said, charging through
the door.  He dug through a drawer in my desk and came out with a
remote control.  A moment later a TV I didn't know was there began
rising from an elaborate wooden trunk.

"... there were bullets flying everywhere when I was evacuated."  Ken
Ewing looked a little more battered than I remembered.  Both his eyes
were blackened, there was a spiderweb of small cuts on the bridge of
his nose, and his right arm was in a sling.  "We had to detach the raft
and pull away with two of our guys still on the boat, but we stayed
about a hundred yards off the stern and waited.  We saw them get blown
over the starboard railing by an explosion about a minute later.
Fortunately, we got them both out.  One was "

Trainer jabbed the Mute button when the picture changed to Ewing's
joyful reunion with his wife and daughters.

I remembered the explosion, though not exactly as Ewing described it.
I'd been standing silently next to my father watching the destruction
of the Serbs' yacht cause a false dawn on the horizon.  I'd looked over
at him at one point and seen the reflection of the distant fire in his
eyes, but he'd seemed to be somewhere else.

I assumed Ewing's account had been massaged by our marketing people and
that the real story was that Stephen's team had set a bunch of
explosives to send the Serbs, their boat, and any inconvenient evidence
that might be on board straight to the bottom of the sea.

"That'll get your goddamn blood pumping, won't it?"  Trainer
bellowed.

"I guess so."

He gave me a disapproving frown and then hid his pain as he flopped a
little too carelessly into a chair.  "So?  Not bad, huh?  A heroic blow
against terrorism and crime courtesy of the American tobacco industry.
How's that for turning lemons into lemonade?"

Did I really think Paul Trainer had set this whole thing up?  I suppose
not.  But had he used the industry's connection with foreign smuggling
to encourage it?  Had he sent subtle signals through appropriate
channels suggesting that kidnapping me and Ewing might bear fruit for
the kidnappers?  Had he endangered Ewing by withholding critical
information from the authorities in hopes of a public-relations coup?
Of course.

"I quit."

"Whut?"  Trainer said, stiffening in his chair.

I know I told Anne that I'd stick it out, but last night's antics
smelled faintly of cold-blooded, premeditated murder.  I mean,
realistically, what was the best she and I could hope for?  To wield a
nearly imperceptible bit of influence over how things were going to
play out influence that would quickly be identified and negated by
Terra's marketing department?  How far were we willing to go to act out
what was, in the end, nothing but a futile gesture?

"I said I quit."

"You can't just quit.  Not now."

"Yes I can.  You know, I've never wanted to work here at all I just did
it because ... because I never thought there was an alternative.  And
it was okay when I could bury my head in my filing project from nine to
five and go home.  But I never wanted to be part of anything here."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because in some ways, I believe the hype, Paul.  I believe that we've
knowingly sold death and then lied about it.  I believe that we
cultivate children as customers.  I believe hell, I know that we've
suppressed research showing links between smoking and disease."

I pulled my checkbook from my back pocket and flipped it open, showing
him the crimson pen clipped inside.  "I only sign checks in red, Paul
so every time I buy something I remember that it's with blood money.

And now I'm risking my life for .. . For what?  Trust payments?  To
save the world from itself?  To rescue the family business?  To try to
conjure up some self-esteem?  It's not worth it."

Unexpectedly, Trainer broke into an uncontrolled bout of laughter that
left him doubled over, coughing violently.  I thought for a moment that
I might be witnessing his death, but after about a minute he managed to
regain control of his breathing.

"That's the most melodramatic pile of warm shit I've ever heard in my
life.  Christ, son, you can't quit.  Without all this pain and guilt,
who would you be?"

"I don't know," I said.  "But maybe it's time for me to find out."

"Don't you ever get tired of being such a whiny putz?"  he said.  "It
may surprise you to know that there are people in the world who
actually have real problems and not just ones they make up every
morning while they're shaving.  What could you possibly want that you
don't already have?  Hell, it even looks like you're going to score
with that girl from Smokeless Youth and let me tell you that the office
pool was giving hundred to one odds against you on that."

My eyes widened a bit, even though I tried to stop them.

"Yeah, I know all about her," Trainer said, standing and once again
slinging a stiff arm around my shoulders.  "You're being too hard on
yourself, son.  What if you burned every dollar you ever made?  Hell,
what if you donated it all to starving kids in China?  What would it
have changed ?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but he cut me off.

"I'll tell you what it would have changed: nothing.  Except that you'd
be poorer.  People would still smoke.  And they'd still die from it."

I squirmed uncomfortably, but he didn't remove his arm.  A bone in his
wrist was digging into my neck.

"I heard you on TV.  You believe in freedom, just like I do."  His arm
tightened a little more, causing me to wince.  "And now you're putting
yourself at risk to stand up for that belief."

"You have no idea what I believe in," I said.

"I think I do.  And I think you're getting to like the feeling of being
off your knees and up on your feet.  Why give that up?"

Trainer's assistant poked her head into my office.  "Sir?  I have Ken
Ewing on the line."

"I've got to take this," he said, releasing me and starting for the
door.  "Why don't you just cool off for a couple of days.  I don't
think now's the right time for you to quit.  I'm afraid you'd regret it
later."

"I can quit anytime I want."

He stopped in the doorway.  "I'll tell you what, Trevor.  I'll make a
deal with you.  When I'm finished with Ewing, you come into my office
and give me a coherent presentation on exactly what it is you expect to
accomplish' oy quitting.  If you can do that, I'll send you on your way
with a nice severance package and a glowing letter of recommendation.
But don't come in there and tell me that after years of working here
and living off those red checks of yours that you're upset because
you're actually involved.  You were always involved."

He folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head, seeming to
soften a bit.  "You're no more damned today than you were a month ago.
Trust me on this.  I'm an expert."

Thirty-Eight.

"I'm glad you had a chance to spend some time with your family,
Stephen.  But I can't say I'm not glad to have you back."

"I don't get to see them as much as I'd like," Stephen said as he swung
the car into my neighborhood.  "But now they're off to Arizona.
Chelsea's at that age where large holes in the ground are far more
interesting than her old father."

Anne was sitting in the passenger seat and I was in the back,
second-guessing my decision not to take Trainer up on his invitation to
let me argue my case for quitting.  Anne and I had talked for a long
time about the likelihood that Trainer had orchestrated the attack on
us, but the conversation had been a little anticlimactic.  In the end,
neither of us saw much benefit to leaving now.  It seemed a little
optimistic to think that we could duck below everyone's radar so
easily.  Besides, Anne's one person was still out there waiting to be
saved.

What I hadn't told her was what happened to Ewing's kidnappers.  It
wouldn't have changed her mind, and the truth was that I still felt
kind of dirty from the whole thing.  In the end, though, Trainer was
right: My guilt or innocence had already been determined.

My SEEMINGLY permanent media contingent had swelled a bit over the last
twenty-four hours, and now the evening sun was glinting off no fewer
than five satellite-dish-topped vans.  The normal burst of activity
that occurred when my car came into view was unnecessary today because
the reporters were already in position, clutching their microphones and
yelling at their cameramen.  They must have posted a spotter
somewhere.

"Not today, Stephen," I said.

I must have sounded odd because both he and Anne looked back at me.  I
saw him nod and felt the car accelerate.

Not only did we have the entire Ken Ewing rescue playing out all over
the TV and newspapers, but a guy in Iowa also had taken his wife and
kid hostage about four hours ago and was making no bones about the fact
that if he didn't get some cigarettes quick he was going to blow them
away.  Last I heard there were something like fifty cops surrounding
the place with snipers set up on the roofs of his neighbors' houses.
Paul Trainer had graciously agreed to provide the smokes as long as the
media had full access to the man's history of drug abuse, alcoholism,
and violence.

By all reports, cigarettes were now pretty much unavailable in the
United States.  Supplies from initial hoarding had dwindled and the
smuggling effort was fairly lackluster, since organized crime saw this
as a temporary situation at best.

Of course none of this kept people from making an effort.  In addition
to our friend in Iowa, there were multiple reports of tobacco farmers
resorting to salt-filled shotguns to chase away midnight harvesters,
and travel agents were inundated with requests for extended vacations
in countries where foreign-made cigarettes were still in abundant
supply.  All in all, things were getting pretty undignified.

I leaned away from the windows as the reporters clawed at them and
shouted unintelligible questions.  They chased us into the garage but
when Stephen stepped out of the car, they all retreated back onto the
driveway.

There was only one message on my machine, and I unwisely pushed the
button.

"Never hear from you anymore now that you're famous," Darius's voice
boomed.  "Having a party tonight.  If you bring smokes, you'll be sure
to score.  Or maybe I'll have to take a hostage.  How many cartons is
that good for these days?"  There was a long pause, and I imagined him
starting to hang up and then changing his mind.  "Oh, and if you come,
bring that hot blonde from Channel Six.  I think she's living on your
lawn."

I noticed that Anne was glaring at the machine, but when she realized I
was looking her expression turned distant.  "A friend of yours?"

"I've known him since grade school," I said.  "But I don't know if I'd
call him a friend."

"You should go," she said with detachment that, believe it or not,
sounded a little forced.  "You deserve some time to unwind.  And I'm
sure an executive VP like yourself could scare up a few cigarettes
somewhere."

There was a sudden shift in my reality that was disorienting enough to
actually throw me physically off balance.

Anne was jealous.

There was undoubtedly something clever to say at this moment something
that would make it clear that I knew without being so overt as to put
her on the defensive.  Something encouraging.

"Uh, I'm really beat.  I think I'm gonna just hit the sack."

Okay, that wasn't it.  But it was the best I could do under the
circumstances.

I crawled into bed after a long shower and just lay there.  The sun
hadn't completely set and it was filtering through the shades behind my
bed, creating stripes of light that penetrated my eyelids.  I wanted to
pass out from exhaustion, but it wasn't as easy as I thought it would
be.  There were too many things bouncing around in my head.

I spent half an hour like that before I got up, pulled on a pair of
jeans, and padded out into the hall.  I could hear Nicotine running
around downstairs and Stephen encouraging her over the sound of the TV.
Now it was my turn to feel a little pang of jealousy.

The guest-bedroom door was shut, and I stood quietly in front of it for
a while.  Now, you'd think that after lying in bed for half an hour,
I'd have come up with that clever thing I should have said earlier, but
I hadn't.  Desperation and exhaustion seemed to be conspiring against
me.  I felt like I was exactly two inches from getting the only thing
in life I really wanted but certain that I would lose it at the last
moment.

I knocked, still unsure what I was going to say.

"Yeah?  Come in."

She was sitting on top of the covers wearing bright green pajamas and
holding a copy of Time with a lit cigarette on the cover.  Some of her
things had migrated from her apartment and were lying on the floor in
milk cartons that last week had made up her living room bookcase.

"What's up, Trevor?"

I was a little hesitant but managed to get something out before it got
weird.  "I'm glad you're staying here."

She didn't smile or even put down her magazine.  I was getting ready to
back out and close the door again when she finally spoke.

"Me, too."

I'd fallen asleep easily after that.  The bed felt a little softer, the
sun coming through the windows seemed warm instead of blinding, and
Paul Trainer was a million miles away.

I wasn't sure why I woke up the way I felt, I'd assumed that I wouldn't
so much as twitch a finger until morning.  It was sudden enough that I
lifted my head for a moment but not so sudden that I felt the need to
look around in the darkness.  I fell back into the soft pillow,
thinking about Anne, and started to drift again.

The reason I'd come awake the first time became a little more obvious
when something poked me in the back.

"Go to sleep, Nicotine.  We'll play tomorrow, I promise."

Another nudge.  This one was hard enough to set me to bouncing on the
mattress.

"Trevor!"

I rolled over and squinted at a slim, feminine figure next to my bed,
then at my alarm clock, which read eleven-thirty.

"Anne?  What's wrong?"

"I ... I realized I forgot some stuff at my office at SY.  We need to
go get it."

I wasn't quite sure what she was driving at, and I flopped over on my
back.  "Get Stephen to take you over there at lunch tomorrow."

"I need to get it now."

"What?"

"I said, I need to get it now."

I examined her a little more closely and found that there was enough
light to see that she was dressed.

"Why?  What could you "

"Just forget it!"  she whispered loudly.  "I thought maybe you'd help
me, but I guess I was wrong."

That woke me up more or less fully, and I reached for the lamp on my
nightstand.  She grabbed my wrist before I could turn it on.

"What's going on, Anne?  What's so important?"

"Will you help me or not?"

I sighed and threw the covers off, revealing an embarrassing pair of
boxer shorts with Santas all over them before stepping unsteadily into
a pair of jeans.

"Is Stephen still up?"

"Yeah."

"Go tell him we need a ride."

She just stood there.

I managed to find a pair of sandals and a golf shirt, and I put them
on.  When I started for the door, she grabbed my arm again.

"Maybe we could go out the other way," she said.

"Uh, there's only one door, Anne."

She quietly pulled the shade up and opened the window.  I looked out
into my swamp of a backyard but didn't move.

"Come on," she said.  "There's a cab waiting for us a few blocks
away."

Thirty-Nine.

"This is good," Anne said.

The cabdriver eased over to the curb about a quarter of a mile from
Smokeless Youth's headquarters.  It was a little after midnight.

"How much stuff are we getting?  Kind of far to carry anything heavy
...," I said.  My grogginess was gone, replaced by mild nausea and a
nagging headache that weren't so bad that I couldn't figure out it
wasn't necessary to ditch Stephen and climb out a window to retrieve
Anne's favorite pencil sharpener.  So what were we doing here?  I had
no idea Anne had ignored every question on the subject.

She handed the driver wad of small bills and change that had the look
of being the last of her savings.  "Could you wait for us, please?"

"Seriously, Anne," I said as we walked down the middle of the empty
street.  "What are we doing here?"

"You're just full of questions tonight, aren't you?"

I kept watch for nicotine zombies and terrorists as we continued on,
deciding that I might as well just resign myself to going with the
flow.  I was still pretty good at that.  Though maybe not as good as I
used to be.

As we got closer, I could see that there were two cars parked in the
otherwise-empty lot in front of SY's office building.  One was an
innocuous-looking Jetta that I recognized as John O'Byrne's.  The other
was an immaculate gray Cadillac the size of a small boat.  I walked
along the length of it, stopping again near the front windshield.  I
could feel Anne behind me as I stared down at a pack of Kool cigarettes
on the dash.

Now, my father had never smoked a Kool in his life.  However, he had an
inexplicable paranoia that every black person in the country wanted
nothing more out of life than to steal his Caddy.  At some point years
ago, he'd theorized that if he put a pack of Kools (apparently popular
with the African-American crowd) on the dash, that the auto thieves
hiding behind every rock would think the car belonged to a pimp and
would leave it alone.  I'm serious this was his thought process.

Anne pressed her cheek against my shoulder.  A moment later she slipped
a hand in mine and started pulling.

This time I didn't budge.  All I wanted was to go back to the cab,
home, and bed.  I was entitled.

She pulled harder, and I yanked my hand free.  "I'm out of here."

"You can't leave!"  she said, blocking my path.

"I can do anything I want."

"Anything Paul Trainer wants," she corrected.

I thumbed back to the Cadillac.  "Why are you pushing this, Anne?  You
know what happens when you start sticking your nose into things like
this?  You find out a bunch of things that you didn't want to know and
that you can't do anything about."

"How do you know there's nothing you can do about it?  You have no idea
what's going on in there."

I tried to get around her but she sidestepped, blocking me again.  We
did that little dance for a few more seconds before I gave up.

"Who do think has your best interests more at heart?"  she said.  "Me,
your father, or Paul Trainer?"

I thought about that for a moment.  "Is none of the above one of my
options?"

She smirked and grabbed my hand again.  "Oh, shut up."

We went around the back of the building and stopped at a window that
was about five feet off the ground.

"What luck!"  she said, feigning surprise as she pushed it open.  "It's
unlocked."

"What luck."

After giving her a leg up, I climbed in after her.  There was a quiet
thud as my feet hit the floor, and we both froze for a few seconds and
looked around the dark room.

I saw the silhouette of Anne's hand as she put a finger to her lips but
decided to ignore it.

"Come on, Anne," I whispered.  "Let's just " She clamped a hand over my
mouth long enough for me to get the point and then walked over and
stuck her head out the door into the hallway.  I leaned over her and
took a look for myself.  It was empty and mostly dark.  What little
light there was was streaming from beneath the door of John O'Byrne's
office.

Anne signaled for me to follow and began tiptoeing down the hall.  When
we got close enough to hear the unintelligible murmur of conversation,
she stopped and turned back toward me.  I held my hands up in a
confused gesture.  What were we going to do?  Stick our ears against
the door until someone opened it and we fell inside like an old Three
Stooges episode?  My vote was still to go home.  Ignorance, in this
case, was almost certainly bliss.

She carefully opened the door next to O'Byrne's office and went inside.
I followed her into what turned out to be a neatly organized closet
that went pitch-black when she closed the door behind us.  I felt her
hands on my shoulders and I let her pull me down on top of her as she
lay down on the floor.

I have to say that, while a little weird, this was not an entirely
uncomfortable position.  I was holding most of my weight off her with
my arms, but the entire length of my body was still pressing against
her.  You'd think I would have imagined us like this, but I never
really had.  It'd always seemed disrespectful.  Even sacrilegious.

I was still trying to figure out exactly what was happening when she
shoved a hand into my ribs and squirmed out from beneath me.  There was
a nearly inaudible scraping sound followed by a dim glow that partially
illuminated the little storage room.  I leaned in and saw that she had
exposed a vent that led directly into O'Byrne's office.

My father's voice began floating through the opening, and I pressed in
closer to Anne under the pretense of being able to hear better.

"You're overestimating the president, John.  He's not any more outraged
by the tobacco industry than he is the liquor industry.  He's not on
your side, he's not on our side he's on the side of what's politically
expedient.  All he wants is not to get hurt here."

"But coming out strongly against the industry is politically expedient,
isn't it, Edwin?"  O'Byrne said, condescension and distaste clearly
audible in his voice.

"Come on, John ... Let's try to be realistic here.  The anti tobacco
lobby's message right now is completely fragmented, and you've lost
almost all your funding.  Your support was pretty much universal as
long as everyone was free to smoke and the money was flowing.  But now
... Well, attitudes are changing.  You watch TV.  You read the papers.
This is all starting to move against you."

"I don't think "

My father cut him off, as he had me so many times.  "I've got to tell
you, John ... The president is pissed off right now, but he's not
stupid.  He knows damn well that if Trainer can hold out long enough,
the government is going to have to cave."

There was a long silence as O'Byrne considered my father's perfectly
reasonable analysis.  Anne looked back at me, bringing her face to
within an inch of mine.  It's hard to describe how much I wanted to
kiss her at that moment, but it didn't really seem like the time to
climb out on that particular limb.

"There's an election coming up, and we've got a quarter of the
population interested in only one thing getting their cigarettes back,"
my father said.  "And you can't turn on the television without having
to listen to someone speculate that this thing is going to pull us into
a recession if it goes on much longer.  Nonsmokers don't want that, and
most of them think smokers should get to make their own choices anyway.
Wake up and look at the goddamn polls."

"I assume you have a point," O'Byrne said, sounding more than a little
angry.

"I'm wondering what your best-case scenario is here?  Is it that the
industry goes under and no one can smoke anymore?  That's not going to
happen.  And if it did where would that leave you?"

As the victor, I thought.  Anne leaned in closer to the vent, but when
her old boss finally spoke, I don't think it was what she was hoping to
hear.

"I assume you have something to propose?"

"I propose damage control.  What you don't want is Trainer to win this
thing outright.  What if we could just make this all go away?  Put
things back the way they were?  I've spoken to the president and he's
behind me, but he wants support from the anti tobacco lobby.  He
doesn't need a bunch of people going on TV saying he was too scared to
fight and has doomed millions of people to die."

"What are we talking about?"

"We're talking about you saying that the industry was trying to put
itself above the law, that he didn't blink, and that this is a win for
America."

Another long silence.

"And what's in it for me if I agree to support this?"

There was no immediate response from my father, but I could picture him
doing that smile nod thing he favored when he perceived that he'd
won.

"Increased financial support for the fight against underage smoking.
We'll come to a firm number in the next couple of weeks, but I
guarantee that you'll be happy with it."

O'Byrne didn't answer, despite Anne pressing her nose against the grate
and willing him to.

"Come on, John.  How likely is it that we're going to shrivel up and
blow away?  We're just too big and employ too many people.  If Trainer
wins and we get immunity from the courts, you'll lose the publicity you
get from the big suits and everyone will start to see the fight against
tobacco as a lost cause.  You know it's true.  Now can I tell the
president that he has your support?"

Again no answer, but an agreement must have been reached because we
heard someone stand.

"Good.  You've made the right decision, John."

We heard a door open and then O'Byrne's voice.

"You haven't told me one thing, Edwin .. . What's in this for you?"

If my father answered, we couldn't hear it.

Forty.

Anne told the cabdriver to take us back to her place and I didn't
object, though in the back of my mind I

wondered if we shouldn't be crawling back beneath Stephen's iron
wing.

When we finally made it to Anne's apartment, I sank into the sofa and
let my head fall back onto the cushions.  She was clanking pans
violently in her tiny kitchen, but I didn't pay attention.  I was
feeling a little self-absorbed.

It's a hard moment when you finally have to admit to yourself that your
father is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, an ass.  Not an evil genius or
psychopath, not a bank robber or horse thief.  Just a dime-a-dozen
pathetic, mean, insecure prick.  Honestly, if you find yourself in my
position and have the capacity to lie to yourself on this subject, do
it.  Your life will be all the happier.

The undeniable truth was that he was working to undermine everything
Trainer and I had been doing, and betraying the family business in the
process.  The answer to the question John O'Byrne had posed at the end
of their meeting was crystal clear.  What was in it for my father?
Relevance.

I felt Anne tapping me on the knee and lifted my head.  She handed me a
cup of tea and I took it, even though I hate tea.

"I'm sorry," she said, sliding onto the sofa sideways and tucking her
bare feet beneath my leg.

"For what?"

She shrugged.  "When I started hearing rumors about that meeting, I

tried to just ignore them.  I decided I wasn't going to tell you about
it..."  She let out one of those short laughs that sounded like a
precursor to tears.  "I mean, I figured what was the point?  But then
..."  Her voice trailed off.

"Don't worry about it, Anne.  It's okay."

"Are you?"

"What?"

"Okay."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

I closed my eyes but could still feel her examining the side of my
face.

"Maybe because your own father is working against you at the company? A
month ago, I'd have believed you when you said you didn't care.  But I
know better now."

"My father isn't 'working against' me," I said, trying to convince
myself more than her.  "He's working against Paul Trainer.  It's just
business, Anne.  It doesn't have anything to do with me."

For a moment I thought she was going to let me get away with that, but
it wasn't to be.

"Fine.  Sit there and lie to yourself if that's what you want to do.
Sit there and let your father take over Terra and put you out on your
ear.  But you know as well as I do that a lot of this is about you.  It
shouldn't be, but it is."

The fact that she was right and that she wouldn't just let it go
touched off something in me.  I jumped to my feet and jabbed a finger
in the air toward her.

"What the hell do you want from me, Anne?  Do you want me to be like
you?  To give up everything I have to work for twenty grand a year at
an organization whose whole purpose in the world is to make its
employees feel superior?  Do you want me to spend my life bringing
coffee to a guy who just sold his soul to the general counsel of the
largest tobacco company in the world for a few dollars and some TV
face-time?"

I went on like that for long time.  She just sat there wearing an
expression of despair that I was too worked up to notice.  When I
finally finished my tirade, I fully expected her to attack me like she
had that night at my house.  But she didn't.  For about thirty seconds,
everything but the headlights washing through the window behind her was
completely still.  It was then that I realized I'd hurt her.  It had
never crossed my mind that I had the power.

"Anne, I "

"I thought we'd gotten past this," she said, cutting off my apology.
"I'm getting sick and tired of listening to you go on about what's
wrong with the industry and the anti tobacco lobby and the government
and why it's not any of your business.  I thought we'd decided to make
it our business."

I flopped back down on the sofa, and to my surprise she slid her feet
beneath my leg again.

It was hard not to wonder what she saw when she stared so hard at me. I
assumed not much.  I was becoming increasingly suspicious that there
might be a reason I didn't have anyone I could truly call a friend. I'd
told myself for the last twenty-five years that it was because everyone
was shallow and blind and uncaring, but was that really it? Or was it
because I was easy to write off?  I'd spent most of my life trying to
disappear.  Had I been too successful?

"My mom didn't smoke before she had me," Anne said, breaking me from my
trance.

"What?"

"She started in nineteen seventy.  Kind of ironic, huh just a few years
after the government warnings came out.  My father was a drunk a man
who makes your dad look like a saint.  Mom would never say it, but I
was an accident.  I think it was the stress of trying to raise me and
hold on to Dad that made her start."

"Anne, you can't "

"She was always talking about quitting.  Then my dad left, and we were
on our own.  It never seemed like she could put enough good years
together back-to-back to stop.  I can still see her sitting at our
kitchen table, staring off into space with a cigarette in her hand.  I
think it was the only thing in her life that was ever easy that gave
her pleasure without asking for anything in return.  But in the end, it
did want something in return.  On top of everything she'd been through
in her life, she got cancer."

Anne leaned back a little further into the sofa's worn arm.  "For a
long time I remembered her fighting, but now it seems like maybe it was
me who was fighting.  I'd skip school to take her to doctors, spend
hours researching treatments, deal with medication, argue with
insurance companies ... And she'd just sit there watching TV and
sneaking cigarettes.  Waiting to die.  Maybe even looking forward to
it, I don't know."

The headlights of a passing car beamed through the window and glinted
off a tear that didn't quite have enough mass yet to make its way down
her cheek.

I wanted to say something, but what?  Should I start into my
well-polished speech on freedom and self-determination?  Go on about
personal responsibility and blame?  My many detractors were right:
Those carefully crafted and unwaveringly logical arguments seemed
perfectly relevant when you were talking about three hundred thousand
people, but lost their potency when you were talking about one.

So I just sat there and listened.  About her mother's aborted
relationships, about lost jobs and lost hope, about constant moves and
the struggle to fit in, about trailer parks and police.  About how
people die.

It finally dawned on me that Anne didn't blame herself for her mother's
smoking or her death.  Anne blamed herself for not loving her mother
unconditionally.  She blamed herself for the disdain and anger she'd
felt and for the endless fights.

When she finished talking, I put a hand against her cheek and forced
her to look at me.  "Where do we go from here, Anne?  You said a while
ago that it was time to choose sides.  Whose side are you on?"

She thought about it for a moment and then pulled herself onto my lap,
straddling me and bringing her face down to mine.  "I think we should
talk about this later."

I played my game again that morning.

I lay there with my eyes closed, completely still and barely breathing.
I didn't feel hungover but the memory of last night still had a fuzzy,
dream like quality.  Had any of it really happened?  Or would Nicotine
run into my room in a few moments, jump on the bed, and prove for the
hundredth time that I was alone.

I don't know how long I stayed there beneath blankets that felt too
heavy and a sun that felt improperly angled, avoiding doing anything
that might prove I was just lying'in my own bed with an assassin in my
kitchen and a pack of reporters on my lawn.

I finally mustered enough courage to slide a hand sideways and begin my
search for resistance.  It was a long two seconds, but my fingers
finally contacted skin, sending a weak jolt of adrenaline through me. I
ran them up a leg, a hip, a back, and finally slipped them into a
tangle of soft hair.

I'd finally won.

Anne squirmed back and forth for a moment, trying to sink deeper into
the mattress, and I opened my eyes.  When I finally propped myself up
on one elbow, she rolled on her side and peered up at me through eyes
that were still half closed.

It was a moment that should have been ecstatic for me but turned out to
be more a terrifying than anything else.  What would I see when she
finally came fully conscious?  Regret?  Horror?  Disgust?  Would she
think I had taken advantage of her delicate emotional state?  Had I?

But there was nothing like that.  She just slid a hand across my
stomach and let it lie there.

I know it sounds stupid, but I could have stayed in that bed forever. I
wanted to talk more about her life, her mother, her plans.  I wanted
this morning to go on and on and on.  But it couldn't.

I pushed the hair out of her face, and she smiled.

"You didn't answer my question last night."

Her head replaced her hand on my stomach, and she lay there thinking
and waking up.

"Where do we go from here?  I don't know.  What I do know, though, is I
want things to change.  I want to end the inertia.  I want to do
something that makes a difference ... I'm honestly not sure I care if
it's a change for the better or for the worse.  I mean, maybe you're
right.  Maybe if people knew that smoking was their decision and their
decision alone, it might jump-start things again.  Breathe some life
back into us."

"Maybe," I said.

"At least we'd have a fresh angle to work from.  We could try a really
no-nonsense campaign to promote personal responsibility "

"You're on your own, baby," I said, paraphrasing an old Virginia Slims
ads.

She rolled on her back and looked up at me.  "Hey, that's not bad.  Can
I use it?"

"Be my guest.  So what if we take Paul Trainer's side?  Would you be
willing to risk Tobacco getting everything they ever wanted just to
break you out of your rut?"

"I was hoping you could work it out so the industry has to make huge
concessions."

I laughed.  "Not likely."

It took a few minutes, but she finally gave a short, slightly defeated
nod.  I reached for the phone and dialed Paul Trainer's home number. It
was Saturday, I remembered, and I figured I'd try him there first.

"Hello?"

"Paul?  It's Trevor."

"Trevor.  What's going on?"  He sounded a little subdued, but I didn't
think anything of it at the time.

"I need to talk to you."

"About what?"

"About my father."

"Talk, then."

"Not over the phone.  Can I come over?"

"Sure, why not?  I'll be here."

Forty-One.

We found Paul Trainer on the west side of a house big enough to use the
points of the compass to describe it.  He was in a room full of
flowering plants, tending them with awkward and uncaring movements that
should have told me the setting was staged.  I guess I was too excited
by my newfound sense of purpose to notice the obvious clues.  What I
did notice, though, was that, surrounded by the expansive grandeur of
his home, Trainer looked kind of small.  A little more like the fading
old man he probably was.

"Come in, boy," he said, waving at me with a dangerous-looking pair of
shears.  "What's so important that you have to come over here on a
weekend?"

Anne stayed close behind me as I stepped through the door and into the
floral-scented room.  She swore that she was just tagging along to
offer moral support, but it was more likely that her purpose was
actually to make sure I followed through.  Either way, it was good to
have her strength to draw from.

"I needed to talk to you," I fumbled.

He picked a bug off a delicate fern and accidentally took the leaf with
it.  I felt a sneeze coming on.

"I think we established that.  You said it was about your father?"

I nodded, though he wasn't looking at me.  Anne whispered, "You're
doing good.  Go on," in my ear.

"He's planning to take over Terra and put cigarettes back on the
market."

"Is that right?"

I nodded again.

"And what makes you think that?"

"I ... we heard him meeting with John O'Bryne at Smokeless Youth.  He's
trying to get the support of the anti tobacco lobby so that they'll
back the move and stand behind the president."

He went back to his plant and didn't say anything.  After about a
minute, I looked over at Anne.  She just shrugged.

"So what do you think, Paul?  What should we do?"

"There's nothing you can do."

Oddly, I didn't react to the voice except to turn toward it.  My father
was standing in an open doorway to our right, leaning against the
jamb.

"You're too late, Trevor I've got everyone in my hip pocket.  I warned
you about playing a game you weren't up to."

Anne squeezed my shoulder as I looked back at Trainer.  He was
concentrating on his fern.

"That's right, Trevor.  He called me," my father said, bouncing off the
jamb and swaggering toward me.  "He told me you were coming."

It occurred to me that Dad didn't have to be here that he'd gone out of
his way to create this face-to-face confrontation.  The quiet drama of
it was obviously calculated to magnify the humiliation of my defeat,
but it had the opposite effect.  I suddenly felt so completely superior
to him.

"This wasn't personal, Dad.  It's never been personal.  I thought
continuing with this thing was right for the company and for the
country.  That's all."

"What you thought wasn't really relevant, though.  Was it, Trevor?
Don't you understand?  You were never a player in any of this.  Trainer
used you and now he's throwing you away."  He laughed humorlessly.
"You've turned out to be quite the hypocrite.  You spend your entire
life acting like you're too good for all this, but when you got a taste
of the power you'd never been strong enough to go out and take, you
lapped it up.  Isn't that right, Paul?"

Trainer nodded as though there was someone controlling his head with a
string, and Anne leaned into my ear.  "I think maybe it's time to go,
Trevor."

But she was wrong.  It wasn't time to go.  I felt ashamed that I'd
never really stood up to my father that I'd let this little man play
out his insecurities on my mother ancTme unchallenged for so long.

"Why did you send Scalia that copy of my trust, then, Dad?  I mean, if
I'm so irrelevant, why bother?  Were you trying to prove to yourself
that you're smarter than me?  Stronger than me?  You're not.  You never
have been."

His expression hit me hard.  I'd swear I saw hatred in it.

"No?  Do you have any idea how easy it was to outsmart you?  I've been
talking to Randal and the other senators ever since Trainer blindsided
them by shutting down.  And then you walk into the Oval Office and
insult the president?  Brilliant move.  By the time you got on TV and
started going on about concessions the board was calling me not the
other way around.  If "

"What's your problem, Dad?  I've never understood it.  Is it that
Grandpa liked me and your brothers better than he liked you?  News
flash, Dad: Grandpa was a prick and had the depth of a mud puddle.
You're nearly sixty.  This 'my daddy didn't love me' thing is starting
to look a little stupid."

"You're out, Trevor!"  he said in a voice now shaking with rage. "Don't
come into the office on Monday.  Don't ever let me catch you in that
building again."

He turned and started for the door, but I ran over and blocked his
path.  The final, irretrievable loss of my job and trust had less of an
effect on me than I thought it would.  What really pissed me off wasn't
my newfound poverty; it was the fact that my trust would revert to
him.

"Didn't Grandpa leave you enough money, Dad?  Now you need to take
mine, too?  I guess at least you can go to sleep now knowing you're
richer than me."  I paused.  "Oh yeah, but you didn't make any of that
money, did you?  Someone gave it to you."

"I worked my ass off to get where I am!"  he shouted.  "I'm the goddamn
CEO of Terracorp!"

"And I was the executive vice president of strategy.  Big deal."

"Well, we're about to see how far that gets you, aren't we?"  He turned
that weird, washed-out purple he always did when he was really furious,
but wouldn't meet my eye.  He turned and pointed at Anne.  "And don't
you bother trying to crawl back to O'Byrne.  I'll be on the phone to
him in ten minutes."

Her nose scrunched up in an expression that you might get if you
accidentally stepped on a slug barefoot.  "I guess I'll have to go back
to making a quarter of a million a year suing you, then."

When he went for the door again, I stepped aside and focused on Trainer
again.  "I take it you're not going to fight this."

"We had a good run, boy.  But I can't afford to fight."

"How much are you getting?"

"Enough."

"What about me?"  I said.

He grabbed a watering can and began drowning an orchid.  "What about
you?"

Stephen, who'd driven us there, was nowhere to be found when we stepped
back around the front of the house.  He'd undoubtedly abandoned us to
protect my father's much more important body, but had the good manners
to leave the keys in my ignition.  Anne and I took a circuitous route
home, using well-traveled roads that I wouldn't normally take.  The
announcement that the cigarette floodgate would soon open again hadn't
yet been made, and it seemed likely that I still had a lot of
enemies.

By tomorrow, though, I figured every smoker in America would have a
cigarette perched between his or her lips and the media would move on
to a good political sex scandal, missing child, or immigrant who'd
seen

Jesus' face in a tortilla.  And honestly, that was okay with me. Having
taken my best shot, I was at peace with the idea of fading into the
background again.

"That could have gone a little better," Anne said, testing the waters.
She clearly felt a little responsible for the showdown with my dad, but
the truth was that it had been long overdue.

"Your father's a businessman," she said.  "That whole game is about
getting ahead ..."

I smiled, surprising myself with how easy it was.

"What about your trust?"  she asked, sounding increasingly despondent
about her role in maneuvering me into my current predicament.  "Can he
really fire you?"

I didn't know.  As a practical matter, it seemed like I'd have
substantial grounds for a wrongful-termination suit.  I mean, I'd
risked my life for that company and done everything asked of me.  If
those weren't the actions of a pretty damn good employee, what were?

The problem was, I had a feeling that that was exactly what he wanted.
He wanted to see me grovel, and once he did, he'd be happy to enslave
me again by giving me the most demeaning job he could find.

"You weren't just gold-digging, were you?"  I said.  "You're not going
to dump me now that I'm poor."

Her smile looked more relieved than happy.  "I probably would, but I
sense good income potential."

That actually made me laugh.  "I'd hate to meet someone you thought had
bad income potential."

"I'm serious, Trevor.  Think about it.  You're the thirty-two-year-old
former executive VP of one of the largest corporations in the world.
You're all over TV and the newspapers.  Don't sell yourself short."

"I admire your optimism."

"Monica Lewinsky's a millionaire."

"Thanks for that flattering analogy."

"My point is, there's no such thing as bad publicity."

She had a point, but I wasn't sure that was what I wanted.

"What about you, Anne?  Are you serious about going back to being a
lawyer and suing the tobacco companies?"

She settled into her seat and watched the landscape speed by through
the passenger window, but didn't answer me.

Forty-Two.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE I LET YOU TALK ME INTO THIS."

Anne rolled her eyes and kept moving forward through the soggy grass.

Except for the reverse angle, everything was as I remembered it.  The
elaborate podium I'd stood on a week earlier was still there, framed by
the enormous cigarette manufacturing plant and elevated to a majestic
height by the natural slope of the land.  The audience, though, was at
least twice the size of the one that showed up to hear me talk.  I
didn't take it personally.

"Don't you think this is far enough?"  I said, using my elbows and
shoulders to keep us from getting bogged down in the crowd.

"Quit being such a baby," Anne said.  "Don't you want a good view?"

"No."

She ignored me and continued her surgical penetration of the sweating
mass.  In my effort not to make eye contact with anyone, I tripped and
nearly did a nose dive into a little kid.  By the time I'd gracelessly
recovered my balance, the people around me were all staring.  I froze
and waited for something to happen, but nothing did.  A moment later, I
felt Anne's inevitable tug on my hand and moved on.

Word of my presence spread faster than we could walk and soon the crowd
was parting in front of us, creating a corridor just wide enough to
pass through.  A man in a pair of worn overalls pulled his daughter
behind him as though he thought I might attack.  A woman with
horn-rimmed glasses folded her arms and glared at me.  A kid who looked
like a high-school football player stepped forward to prove he wasn't
afraid, then retreated.

It took another five uncomfortable minutes for Anne to position us dead
in front of the lectern.  We were still about twenty feet away, but
that was as close as the yellow barricades and guards would allow.  I
glanced at my watch and saw that, as I had been, the main attraction
was late.  We were dying in the sun and the sweat was starting to soak
through my clothing, leaving less than dignified stains growing on the
thin fabric of my shirt.  Anne had had the presence of mind to wear an
enormous hat that shaded most of her body and made her practically
invisible from above.  It was dark purple and, combined with a
similarly colored sundress, it made her look like a bridesmaid at the
wedding of a grape.  I, of course, kept this to myself.

Another five minutes went by before my father, all youthful energy and
perfect hair, finally bounded up the steps of the podium.  The air
filled with a bland round of applause with one noisy dissenter.  Anne
began booing loudly.

I nudged her.  "Shut up.  You're going to get us in trouble."

She tilted her head back, and her face appeared from beneath her hat.
"Try it.  It's fun.  "

I had to admit that the idea was kind of appealing.  I cupped my hands
around my mouth and gave a test boo.  It felt good, so I threw a little
more feeling into the second one.  My father was intently oblivious,
but everyone around us took another step back.

"Hello, I'm Edwin Barnett.  Many of you already know that I've been
named to replace Paul Trainer as the new chief executive officer of
Terra-corp.

The clapping died off, and I put a hand over Anne's mouth.  She bit
me.

"I know these past few weeks have been hard on everyone and on behalf
of the company, I want to apologize for that.  My first order of
business as CEO is to get everyone back to work."

That got another round of applause, but not the rousing thunder you'd
expect.

"I'll be honest with you ..."

Seemed kind of unlikely.

"... there's been some serious infighting going on at headquarters
about the direction this industry is going to take.  And I'm afraid
that y'all were the victims of that.  Be aware, though, I'm sensitive
to how hard this has been."

As an industry spokesman, it occurred to me that I'd been underpaid. My
father oozed insincerity as only a tobacco executive or used-car
salesman could.

"I've worked closely with the other CEOs and the government most
notably President Anderson and Senator Randal to put an end to this
stalemate."  He paused dramatically.  "As of tomorrow morning, we're
open for business again."

Another lackluster round of applause.  I looked around me at the
worried faces turned up toward my father.

"I want you to know that the sacrifices you made over the past few
weeks weren't wasted.  We made our point.  I have a number of meetings
scheduled with President Anderson to start talking about how we can
make our companies and our jobs more secure."

"What exactly does that mean?"  Anne shouted, loud enough to silence
the few individual hand claps that were threatening to spread.  "It
sounds like you folded like a cheap suit!  Did you give yourself a big,
fat raise when you took over and sold us out?"

In a testament to the efficiency of the tobacco industry, no fewer than
four bulky security guards suddenly materialized and grabbed us.  I
didn't bother to struggle, but Anne thrashed around like a hooked
trout.  "Don't believe him!"  she shouted, apparently having a hell of
a good time being dragged through the crowd.  Trainer was right: I
really needed to learn to quit worrying all the time and enjoy life.

"You think he cares about whether you starve or not?  He just "

One of the guards put a hand over her mouth and she bit him, too, but

I suspect a lot harder.  As he drew a hand back to hit her, I elbowed
the guy holding me and sent him staggering backward.  I was gearing up
to swing at the guy about to hit Anne when Stephen suddenly emerged
from the gawking crowd and the guards immediately retreated.  He put a
hand on each of our backs and pushed us toward the parking lot as my
father's amplified voice started in again.

"I'm sorry about that.  We tried to keep the antismoking lobby out of
here, but we can't catch 'em all... As I was saying, I'm having
meetings with the president where ..."

"Who says being a sore loser isn't fun?"  Anne said when we finally
cleared the crowd.

"Well, I think you've both had quite enough fun for one day," Stephen
said, continuing to push us gently toward my car.

She looked back and gave him a guilty frown that was entirely too
attractive.  "Sorry, Stephen.  Are you going to get in trouble for not
giving us the rubber-hose treatment?"

"Who said I wasn't?"  He sounded serious enough to worry us both but
then broke into a smile.  "I think maybe a strategic retreat and some
regrouping might be in order for you two."

He finally stopped at the edge of the parking lot and gave us one last
shove.  "Good luck."

"See ya, Stephen," Anne said.

I picked up the pace in case he changed his mind about the hose.

"Where were you back there?"  Anne said, jabbing me playfully in the
ribs.

"Right behind you."

"Kinda quiet."

"I booed!"

"You call that a boo?  Let me hear it again."

"Boo," I said in a quiet, irritated voice.

"Come on!"  she said, turning sideways and skipping along next to me.
"Boooo!"

"Boooo!"

"There you go.  I'll make a tobacco industry heckler out of you yet."

We climbed into my car and I pulled out, carefully maneuvering through
the tightly packed cars on our way back out to the road.  We'd only
made it about twenty feet when I heard the back door open and someone
jump in.  I jammed on the brakes, and the man pitched forward.

"Owl  Is that any way to treat an old friend?"

I wasn't sure what to do, so I just started driving again.  Our
passenger stuck his hand up between the seats and offered it to Anne.
"Larry Mann I work for the union."

"Anne Kimball... I'm unemployed."

He leaned back as I eased out onto the rural highway.  In my rearview
mirror I could see a earful of what I assumed were his men following
us.

"So what happened, Trevor?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean with you and Trainer."

I shrugged.  "Apparently there was a sudden change in management
philosophy."

"I gathered."

"It seems that the thought of you guys going hungry was keeping my
father up at night.  He just couldn't bear the strain."

"Sarcasm," Mann said.  "It's new on you, but you wear it well.
Actually, I've talked to your father."

"Really?  What did he say?"

"Oh, he told me how important we are to the company, how he's looking
out for us, how much he respects me ... You know the drill."

"Yeah, I suppose I do."

"I've got to tell you, Trevor, that man is as big a prick as I ever
met.  I sincerely hope your mother was cheating on him when you were
conceived."

"Thanks," I said.

"So what now?"  I looked over at Anne.  "Disneyland?"

Mann laughed.  "You're turning into a real tough guy, you know that?
What happened to the confused little boy I met a few weeks ago?  I'm
serious, Trevor.  You're the only guy in this whole goddamn industry
who even understands the concept of a straight answer.  Give."

"Turns out Paul Trainer's nuts," I said.

"And this is news?  What I want to know is how all this fell apart.
You'd met with the president, you had Congress worried about their
jobs, the press and the country were coming over to your side.  Why
give up now?"

"My father is afraid of becoming irrelevant," I said.  "And the board's
scared."

"I see ... Well, what about us, Trevor?  What happens to us?"

"You got what you wanted.  You got your jobs back."

"But for how long?  We're going to lose in Montana.  How long until the
industry gets sued into oblivion?  How long before Terra can't raise
capital?  Can't get loans?  When we start to get squeezed, it isn't
going to be management that feels it; it's going to be my people."

I shrugged at him in the rearview mirror.  "I feel for you, Larry, but
none of this is my problem anymore."

Forty-Three.

"What's up with this?"  I said, banging on the steering wheel in
frustration.  Instead of dwindling, my media contingent had doubled in
size, and the appearance of my car had reporters jumping from their
vans and scurrying around as though someone had thrown a grenade.

"Look at my lawn, Anne!  How am I gonna sell this place now that
they've destroyed my damn lawn?"

"Maybe you could put in one of those Japanese rock gardens."

I slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a lurching halt a hundred
yards from my driveway.  "What the hell's wrong with them?  I'm fired
and cigarettes are going back on sale tomorrow.  I don't have anything
else to say."  I shoved the car into reverse and was about to do an
impression of my former bodyguards when Anne pulled the shifter into
neutral.

"Hey!"  I said over the sound of the revving engine.  "What are you
doing?"

"Maybe you should talk to them."

"About what?  I'm not the company's spokesman anymore.  I'm just a
tobacco industry heckler, right?  And not even a good one."

"You've got potential," she said through a broad smile.  "It just takes
a little practice."

Through the windshield I confirmed that the reporters weren't advancing
on us.  Yet.

"Have you ever thought of just speaking for yourself, Trevor?  It might
be a good time for you to get on TV and sound magnanimous and
intelligent and unflappable.  To tell people what you were trying to
do."

"What's the point?"  I said.

"First of all, I'll bet it will make you feel better.  And even if it
doesn't, you never know when a future employer might be watching.  It
seems to me that the combined income of the people in this car is zero.
And I like to eat.  Remember?"

"Combined."  I liked the sound of that.

I put the car in drive again and glided regally forward, trying to get
in a magnanimous, intelligent, and unflappable frame of mind.  It
turned out to be kind of a stretch.

The reporters crowded the car, shouting and attacking the windows with
their microphones.  Instead of pulling through them into the garage,
like I normally did, I forced my way out onto the driveway.  I motioned
for quiet and, for some reason, it worked.

"Okay," I said loudly.  "I'm going to stand here and answer every
question you've got as honestly and completely as I can.  But after
that you've got to leave and let my lawn heal, okay?"

Very magnanimous.

"Mr.  Barnett" one of them started, but I held up my hand for silence
again.  "Let me just say a few things before we start the Q and A.
First, I am no longer employed by Terracorp and so I no longer speak
for them."

"Were you fired?"

I thought about that for a moment but couldn't see a way to sugar coat
it.  If anyone in history had ever been fired, it was me.  "Yeah, I
think it would be fair to say that I was fired "

"By your own father?  How did that make you feel?"

"Unemployed.  It made me feel very unemployed.  Look, the strategy that
Paul Trainer and I came up with" I figured I might as well take some
credit since I was in the market for a new job "turned out not to be
viable in the board's eyes and they've decided to go back to the
company's former policies.  Frankly, I don't agree with that decision.
I thought we had a real opportunity for everyone in this country to get
on the same page where the risks of smoking are concerned.
Unfortunately, when push came to shove, the powers that be didn't share
my vision."

"Do you feel that this is a step backward for the interests of the
tobacco companies?"  I recognized the guy who'd asked that question.  A
financial reporter I couldn't remember from where.  It was hard not to
think about the fact that what I said next would either make or lose
millions of dollars for tobacco industry shareholders a group I was no
longer a member of.

"Honestly, I don't think it's in the best interests of anyone, but it's
the board's call and I have to respect their decision."

"Would you elaborate on that, Mr.  Barnett?"

The competition in the group seemed to be easing as it became clear
that I would keep my word and answer all their questions.  The
increased calm allowed me to relax a bit.

"People know that smoking is bad for them if they can't tell by the way
it makes them feel, then they can read the big warning on the pack.
What we've lost here is an opportunity to create an environment of
personal responsibility that perhaps could have reduced the smoking
rates in this country, stabilized an economically critical American
industry, and stopped wasting the courts' time in endless lawsuits."

"Or an opportunity to completely do away with the tobacco industry,"
someone said.  I saw Anne slip out of the car and make a break for the
house.  No one else noticed.

"Maybe," I said.  "That was for the American people and their
representatives to decide."

I felt like I could now check off "unflappable."

"But isn't it true that your real goal was to create an environment
that would allow the tobacco companies to sell a dangerous product
without fear of litigation?"

"In a word yes.  It's true that we make a dangerous product.  If you
smoke, there's a pretty good chance it's going to kill you one day. And
if that bothers you if you don't think it's worth it don't take up the
habit.  If, on the other hand, you feel it improves the quality of your
life to the point where you don't mind it being potentially shortened,
smoke up.  But I'll tell you that we weren't looking to get something
for nothing.  We were willing to bring in the anti tobacco lobby and
the health care community to help create a compromise plan that would
hopefully take the issue of public health out of the courts and put it
back on the legislative side of the government where it belongs."

No one would be able to disprove that statement, though of course I
knew that Paul Trainer wouldn't have given an inch to the anti tobacco
lobby.  Intelligent sounding, though.  I could almost feel my answering
machine filling with job offers.

"Then what's your reaction to the strike?"  The blond Darius was so
infatuated with said.

"What?"

"The strike?"  she said, enunciating a little more carefully this
time.

"What strike?"

They all looked at one another.  "You aren't aware that Lawrence Mann
has called a strike by the Tobacco Workers?  They started picketing
production and distribution facilities about half an hour ago."

I started to lose my grip on the unflappable part of my facade as my
mind tried to wrap itself around that new piece of information.  I
cleared my throat as the woman, sensing weakness, edged toward me with
her microphone stretched out in front of her like a weapon.
"Apparently, the tobacco industry's food divisions have also walked off
the job."

"My theories on doughnuts must have had them worried," I managed to get
out.  Everyone laughed.

"Well, you obviously figured out a way to scare the shipping industry,
too, because the Teamsters are honoring the strike by refusing to
deliver tobacco products."

"I, uh ... I told you I'd answer your questions, but I'm not sure what
to say here.  I didn't know anything about this."

The blond woman motioned toward her van, and we all followed her.  The
back was open and she leaned in, speaking to the guy sitting inside.
"Bobby, can we get a playback on Lawrence Mann's statement?"

A moment later, Mann's face appeared on a tiny four-inch screen.  I
watched it while everyone else watched me.

"We supported Paul Trainer and Trevor Barnett in this from the
beginning, and frankly we think it's important to finish what we start.
The tobacco industry our way of life is being slowly destroyed.  But
with no real goal other than to make a bunch of attorneys millionaires.
We work hard down here, and we sure as heck aren't rich.  But we do
have families and we have to think about their future.  If America
wants cigarettes called a narcotic and made illegal, then it's time to
stand up and say that.  On the other hand, if we want to continue with
freedom and the right to choose, then we need to say that.  But it's
time that the people of the South know if we're going to be able to
feed our kids and provide for ourselves in our old age.  And that
decision shouldn't lie with twelve people on a jury, but with everyone
every American.  So I want you to call the president, I want you to
call your representatives in government, I want you to call the tobacco
companies, the anti tobacco lobby, whoever.  And I want you to tell
them that this is America and that you don't want to be told what you
can and can't do in the privacy of your own home."

I began backing away, and the group went with me.

"Mr.  Barnett, do you have any comment?"

"No.  No, I really don't," I said, turning and starting for the car.  I
honked the horn as I threw myself into the driver's seat.  "Anne!  Come
out and bring Nicotine with you!  We're leaving!"

"I can't believe it, but it looks clear," Anne said, slipping out from
behind a hedge and jumping back into the car.  We were a few blocks
from her apartment, and I'd sent her ahead for a little recon.  The
smart move would have been to go hide out in a hotel, but our current
financial position prohibited such an extravagance.

I pulled away from the curb and rounded the corner, heading toward her
parking space.  "Thanks for putting me up."

"No problem; you can stay as long as you want.  But this seems like an
obvious hiding place.  How long do you figure it'll take them to track
you down?"

"Hopefully not until I've found a nice apartment in Outer Mongolia?"

"Bad food and worse weather.  What's your backup plan?"

I parked the car and shut off the motor, but didn't get out.  "That was
my backup plan."

"Are you going to call Larry Mann?"

"What for?  I don't work for Terra anymore.  It's the worst of all
worlds: I don't get paid and I don't have any power, but everyone
thinks I'm responsible.  Seriously, maybe we should take a trip.  I've
got some room on one of my credit cards.  I always wanted to go to
France ..."

"The French smoke more than we do, and because of you we're not
exporting."

"Yeah.  Right."  I climbed out of the car, and Nicotine clambered over
the seats to follow.  "Seems like it won't take long for the press to
figure out I'm not in the loop anymore and move on.  I'll just lie low
for a few days."

"Mr.  Barnett!"

We both turned toward the familiar voice and watched Blonde and
Brunette jump from a car illegally parked next to a fire hydrant.

"Mr.  Barnett!  We need to talk to you," Blonde said as they jogged up
to us.

"Geez, I haven't seen you guys since ... When was it, Anne?"

"I guess it would have been when they ran away while we were getting
shot at."

"Your father would like to talk to you," Brunette said, pretending not
to hear.

"You know, my calendar's a little full right now.  Tell him to have his
people call my people, and we'll try to set something up for next
month."

"It won't take long, Mr.  Barnett.  An hour at the most," Brunette said
politely.

I started to turn away, and he grabbed my arm.  "Really, sir.  Just a
short meeting.  He's very anxious to get together with you."

I tried to jerk my arm back, but he just increased his grip.

"I said no!  Now let go of me!"

"Why don't you just relax, Mr.  Barnett?"

It was then I realized that these assholes were just a couple of
steroid-enhanced pretty boys neither of whom was even bigger than me.
Fuck them.

Before Blonde could get ahold of my other arm, I pulled it back and
rammed my fist into Brunette's evenly tanned face.  He was so
surprised, he didn't even try to duck.

My arm slipped from his grip and he fell back on the asphalt, blood
flowing freely from the impressive piece of rhinoplasty centered on his
face.  Blonde made a move toward me, but then something happened that
I'd never seen before: Nicotine jumped between us with teeth bared and
hair bristling.  A low growl escaped her and Blonde froze, staring down
at one hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, fur, and teeth.

"Hello?"  I heard Anne say.  I glanced back and saw her talking into
her cell phone.  "Police?  I'd like to report a kidnapping in
progress."

Blonde wisely concluded that his momentum was lost and he backed away,
helping his partner to his feet and then retreating with him to their
car.

"Are you all right?"  Anne said, hanging up the phone.  She took my
hand and looked down at the bloody knuckles.  "Jesus, Trevor.  What got
into you?"

Nicotine continued to growl, and I used my other hand to smooth down
the hair on her back.

"Do you have anything in your fridge?"  I said.  "I'm starving."

Forty-Four.

I SLEPT THAT NIGHT THE WAY I HAD WHEN I WAS A

kid a dreamless, careless preview of death.  The loss of my job at the
hands of my father had combined with my triumph over the Ponytail
Brothers to more or less free me of the baggage I'd been carrying
around since my childhood.  While it was true that my future wasn't
exactly so bright I had to wear shades, it was throwing off a warm
glow.  You know what I'd fallen asleep thinking about?  I mean, other
than Anne?  Being a chef.  No kidding.  A chef.  I'd never allowed
myself to seriously consider it before.  Change, I'd decided, was
good.

A ringing phone wasn't enough to awake the new,
temporarily-at-peace-with-himself Trevor Barnett, but Anne's elbow in
my ribs was.  I pulled my face out of the pillow and squinted at her.
Dawn was beginning to burn through the window, and it provided enough
light for me to see the top of her head poking out from beneath the
covers.

"No one calls me this early," came her muffled voice through the quilt.
"It's for you."

We were both too groggy to worry that someone had tracked me down, and
I reached over her for the phone.

"Hello?"

""Morning, Trevor!  Beautiful day!"

It took me a moment to process the voice.  Lawrence Mann.

"It's not day yet."

Anne rolled over and pulled her pillow over her head.  Man, she was
cute.

"You're not an easy guy to track down, Trevor.  I've been calling your
place but..."

"The press is still on my lawn.  I guess I have you to thank for that."
I propped myself into a sitting position against the wall.  Anne's
Smokeless Youth salary apparently precluded the purchase of a
headboard.  "Thanks a lot for the heads up."

"Jesus, Trevor, do you ever check your messages?"

"Not lately," I admitted.  "It's almost always bad news."

"I couldn't tell you about this when we met because the final decision
hadn't been made yet.  But I did everything short of putting an APB out
on you to try to talk to you before I made the announcement."

"Fine.  But why, Larry?  Why do this?  You had your jobs back."

Anne pulled the pillow off her head and opened her eyes, listening to
my side of the conversation.

"The hardest part of this thing was starting it arresting my people's
inertia and getting past their shortsightedness.  You and Paul managed
to force that.  In the end, everybody was pretty resolved.  The general
consensus is that we've come this far ..."

"Big risk, Larry.  Are you sure it's worth it?"

"Sure, why not?  If things start to fall apart, we can always go back
to work.  I've been thinking about this a lot, Trevor.  My job isn't
just in the here and now; it's in the future.  In ten years, will there
be a strong company that can offer my people a good place to work at a
fair wage?"

"When all this started someone pointed out to me that Paul and I didn't
have a friend in the world.  Seems like that's your position now.  My
father, the board, the government, smokers everyone wants this to go
away.  And here you are twisting a knife in them."

"Twisting it hard," Mann said.  "I've set everything up to make it look
like we're hunkering down for the long haul.  When the press starts
picking up on that, smokers are going to go ballistic.  They thought
they had their smokes back, and I pulled the carpet out from under
them.  I hear the

White House's switchboard has been completely lit up since I made the
announcement and that lines to local politicians are fully jammed, too.
Terra's headquarters has a hundred and fifty protestors out front."

"And what about your headquarters?"

He paused, and I imagined him walking over to his office window..

"About two fifty."

"Do they look angry?"

"You have no idea."

Anne threw an arm across me and wiggled a little closer.

"Well, good luck to you, Larry.  I know you'll take it the right way
when I say better you than me."

I leaned over to hang up the phone and had it mere inches from its
cradle when I heard Larry's tinny voice.

"Hold on, Trevor!  You started this.  You can't abandon me now."

I frowned and put the phone back to my ear.  "What?"

"I hear you might be in the market for a job."

I should have told him about my imminent enrollment in cooking school,
but I didn't.

"We need a liaison between Terra management and the union.  Are you
available?"

Forty-Five.

I STILL HAD MY KEY TO Terra's EXECUTIVE

ELEVAtor, and I figured I might as well use it.  On the ride up from
the garage, I took a deep, cleansing breath and tried to forget the
violent shouts of the people outside.  A few more breaths and I'd
almost managed to make my mind go blank.  Any more thought about what
lay ahead was just going to make me more nervous.

When I stepped from the elevator, the two guards who had been so polite
before charged me.  I remained completely passive as they each grabbed
an arm and began forcing me back.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you're going to have to leave the premises
immediately," one of them said.

"I have an appointment with Edwin Barnett," I said.  "I'm representing
the Tobacco Workers' Union."

That seemed to confuse them.

While I had no hard evidence, I suspected that no one from the union
had bothered to mention to my father that I'd been hired and that I
would be coming in Larry Mann's place.  Whether that was calculated to
gain me some kind of psychological advantage or just because Mann
wanted to get a dig in on my father, I wasn't sure.

"Feel free to call the union's headquarters if you want," I
suggested.

They looked at each other for a moment and then just let me go.  I
waited patiently as one of them punched in the code that opened the
door and then held it open for me.  After I'd walked through, I swear I
heard one of them say, "Go get 'em."  Probably just my imagination.

Based on my father's secretary's invitation to "go right on in," I
assumed that Dad was already aware of my presence in the building, but
his reaction proved otherwise.  He jumped up from behind his desk, an
expression of fear briefly crossing his face, as though I was wrapped
in dynamite and had the detonator under my thumb.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"I signed on with Larry Mann yesterday," I said, falling into the chair
in front of his desk.  "He was busy, so he sent me in his place."

"This isn't a game, Trevor.  You go back to Mann and tell him to get
his ass in here.  I'm not dealing with you on this."

I took one more deep breath and let it out slowly.  On the drive in, I
have to admit that I'd been more than a little excited about ramming
some of the arrogance and insecurity my father had subjected me to
right back down his throat.  But now, actually sitting there, I just
wanted the meeting to be over.

"Larry's not coming, and you can't afford to be picky about who you
deal with.  You're in trouble.  Your takeover from Paul was clever and
all, but it needed to go really smoothly in order to stick.  I don't
think I'd call this smooth, would you?"

"You're out of your league here, Trevor.  I "

"You tell me that every time I get knocked down, but I keep getting up,
don't I?  I'm starting to think you're the one out of your league.  Are
you watching the news?  There's a lot of talk about the fact that this
wasn't good for anyone but the lawyers and the politicians.  Larry's
been on to Senator Randal and the others, and they're scared shitless.
You have money, but we have votes.  Every politician in the South is
about an inch from flip-flopping on this thing."

He looked confused, as if he couldn't decide whether to sit or to
continue standing.  "You have no idea what you're doing, Trevor. You're
playing with the livelihoods of tens of thousands maybe hundreds of
thousands of people.  Why?  To get back at me?  To try to get your
trust back?"

I managed not to laugh, but it was kind of a struggle.  "Your concern
for the common man is almost as touching as your concern for the people
out there dying of cancer, Dad."

"How long do you think these semieducated assholes are going to stand
behind you, Trevor?  There are no more cheap loans, no more partial
salaries, no more subsidized food.  No more stolen cigarettes.  You put
too much faith in them.  They just want their Pabst Blue Ribbon and
their pickup trucks.  I can give them that.  What can you give them?
Security fifteen years down the road?  These types of people don't
think fifteen minutes down the road."

"I don't think they'll have to hold out for all that long.  I can
almost feel the board panicking.  Can't you?"

What do you want, Trevor?  You want your job back?  You want to be EVP
strategy again?  You want your trust?  Fine.  You get these people back
to work, and all that's yours."

"I don't think I'm going to be able to sell that, Dad."  "We can talk
about some concessions to the union give you something attractive to go
back to Mann with."

I shook my head.  "We're looking for a long-term solution." "Bullshit!"
he shouted.  "This was all just an old man's fantasy! Congress and the
president aren't going to override the courts and come out in favor of
smoking, for Christ's sake!"

"They might be more receptive than you imagine," I said, sounding
calmer than I felt.  "I think we're in a position to make a deal that
works for everyone."

"You can't do shit!"  he said.  "I run this company.  Not you, not
Mann, and sure as hell not a bunch of rednecks working in a factory! Do
you hear me, Trevor?  I run this company!"

Forty-Six.

I RAN THROUGH THE CRUSH OF PROTESTERS WITH MY

hands on the shoulders of the enormous man in front of me.  I was
completely surrounded by Security and if I had had a towel over my
head, I would have felt like a heavyweight champion headed for the
ring.

Miraculously, we made it to the front door of the Tobacco Workers'
Union headquarters and I ran through.

Conditions inside weren't much better than they were outside.  People
were everywhere: overflowing from cubicles, camped out on the floor,
crammed into corners.  Nearly everyone had a cell phone pressed to
their ear, and all were speaking loudly and passionately into them.

"Welcome to Purgatory," Anne said, stepping over a woman who was
kneeling on the floor pawing through a stack of loose papers.

I thumbed behind me at the door.  "I think some of those people wanted
to kill me!"

"I guarantee it," she said, motioning for me to follow her.  She
pointed to a man running cable through the ceiling as we made our way
through the building.  "All the lines to the published numbers are
jammed."

I must have looked a little scared because she then added, "Hey, almost
half of it's positive."

"What did the other half have to say?"

She didn't answer and since I didn't really want to know, I decided to
change the subject.  "Were you able to get in touch with Terra's board
members?"

Not surprisingly, the showdown with my father hadn't gone well and I'd
been forcibly ejected from the building after an unproductive meeting.
Clearly, the thing that made sense for everyone was for Terra to team
up with the union and continue what Paul Trainer had started.  There
was no way Dad was going to let that happen without a fight, though.
He'd gotten his grip on his new office by opposing that strategy, and
reversing himself now would make him kind of an irrelevant choice for
CEO.  He'd likely be demoted back to general counsel and if the
industry won its battle for legal protection, he'd begin a long slide
into obscurity.

"Yup.  I talked to all of them," Anne said.

"Really?  I figured most of them wouldn't take our calls."

"Nope.  Talked to every one."

"What did they say?  Did they agree to a meeting?"

She nodded.

"How soon?  Can we get them to do it this week?"

"Oh, I think so."

"Do what you can, Anne.  This thing's being held together with spit and
bubble gum."

"How about today?"

"I admire your optimism, but I kinda doubt that's going to happen."

The board was made up of some of the wealthiest and most powerful
people in the country.  Somehow I didn't think they were all going to
jump on their private jets and rush over here to meet with a
thirty-two-year-old imposter.

"Buy me dinner if I can pull it off?"

"Sure."

"Where?"

It occurred to me that Larry hadn't brought up the issue of salary when
he'd hired me.  It seemed likely that I was working for free.  "Might
have to be McDonald's."

"You're on.  They've been waiting for you in the conference room for an
hour."

I stopped short, and a woman with an armload of posters took the
opportunity to dart by.

"What?"

"They've been waiting for an hour.  In the conference room."

A mild sense of panic I thought I'd become desensitized to suddenly
made a forceful return.  Anne must have seen it because she smiled and
dropped the other shoe.

"Also, you've got Angus Scalia, John O'Byrne, and the heads of some of
the other anti tobacco groups waiting for you in Larry's office.
They've been waiting for two hours.  If you want my advice, you might
want to talk to them first I think they're about to kill Angus."

I considered my options: O'Byrne and his cohorts, who had doubtless
spent the last two hours listening to an endless Angus Scalia diatribe
on why they were wastes of skin, or the board who were men and women
very unaccustomed to being made to wait particularly by someone like
me.  Neither seemed all that attractive.

What about "none of the above"?  Maybe it was time to start thinking
outside the box a little.  "Put the anti tobacco lobby people in with
the board."

"Excuse me?"

"Then, maybe you and I could go get some coffee."  I walked off in
search of the copy room.  "Are there doughnuts?"

It turns out they did have doughnuts the little powdered-sugar ones
that had been so instrumental in defining my current philosophy and
raising my blood sugar.  Anne sat on the counter, sipping coffee and
chatting with the haggard people who came in to use the copier.  I
tried to do the same, but was having a hard time focusing.  My master
plan was to soften up the anti tobacco people and the board by leaving
them together for forty-five minutes.  In the end, though, I could only
sweat it out for half an hour.

"Do you THINK if you repeat that loud and often enough, somebody might
believe it?"  Scalia had his tiny feet up on the conference table, a
precarious position for a man of his proportions.  The other anti
tobacco people were on the same side of the table but were packed up at
its edge, as far from him as possible.  Sitting silently on the other
side was Terra's board.  I counted they were all there.  And they all
looked pretty pissed off.

"I didn't come here to talk to you, and I have no idea what you're even
doing here.  So why don't you just "

I'd done a little brush up and knew that the board member shouting at
Scalia was Richard Peg, a former executive at Exxon.  He fell silent
when I entered.  All eyes were on me.

"Ladies and gentlemen," I said smoothly.  "For those of you I haven't
met, my name is Trevor Barnett.  I'm the former executive vice
president of strategy at Terra, and now I'm working with Larry Mann
here at the union."  I managed to sound fairly calm.  "I'm "

"What is this crap?"  Peg said, obviously still a little put out.  "We
all dropped what we were doing and came here with the promise of a
meeting with you."  He pointed across the table.  "Not with them."

Scalia scowled.  "Well, maybe you should pucker up and " I held up a
hand and, surprisingly, he shut up.

"In fact, I had meetings scheduled with both you and the anti tobacco
lobby people you see here.  I thought it might be more efficient to
combine the two meetings."

"I don't see how having these people here is going to help us
accomplish anything."

"Are you afraid we might hear your latest plan to double cigarette
sales to grade-schoolers?"  Scalia said, touching off a shouting match
that included nearly everyone.  I sat down at the head of the table.

"I'd like to answer Mr.  Peg's question," I shouted, and the other
voices in the room faded.

"As all of you know, the shutdown of the tobacco industry has caused a
lot of grief over the last month.  And that's only going to get worse
as the shutdown continues."  I pointed to myself and the board.  "It's
no secret what we want.  We want ironclad protection from the constant
lawsuits "

The anti tobacco people all started talking at once.  O'Byrne, who had
struck such a beneficial deal with my father, was particularly loud.

"Let me finish!"

Everyone fell silent again.

"The bottom line here is that we aren't going to get that protection
for nothing, no matter how much we strong-arm the government.  The
purpose of this meeting is to hash out a deal that works for everyone.
We want protection and frankly we'll accept nothing less.  You" I
pointed to the anti tobacco lobbyists "you want a level of concessions
from us that will make that protection palatable.  And that's fair. Now
you talk.  What, specifically, do you want?"

"I want you sued into oblivion," Scalia growled.  No one responded to
that statement, instead looking to me to do it.

"That's not on the table, Angus.  And, frankly, I don't think it's good
for anyone.  I personally don't believe in putting a bunch of ambulance
chasers in charge of setting policy in this country."

Yes, I'd finally done it publicly expressed an actual, heartfelt belief
without serious injury.  Why not push my luck and try it again?

"I also don't believe in taking away Americans' right to do things that
are bad for them.  There's no telling where that would lead, but I
suspect nowhere good.  Look, the union is in this for the long haul. We
either create a workable deal here or my people hunker down until the
government cries uncle sometime before elections, I'd guess."

Scalia didn't respond, but Peg did.  "Then why don't we just hunker
down and take our lumps, Trevor?  Why offer concessions if we don't
have to?"

"Because in the long term, we can't operate this way.  We're in
desperate need of a stable operating environment, and to get that we're
going to have to create an honest and aboveboard culture."

He didn't argue, so I decided to open it up.  "Okay, let's hear some
productive discussion.  Who wants to start?"

The silence stretched out for more than a minute, but I was determined
not to fill it.  Finally a woman from Terra's board spoke up.

"We could allocate, say, a billion dollars for research into producing
a safer cigarette ..."

That got a few of the anti tobacco lobbyists nodding.  Angus Scalia
threw his legal pad at a wall and jumped to his feet.  "That's the kind
of utter shit that makes it impossible to deal with you people!  How
stupid do you think I am?  You create 'lights' knowing that people will
just smoke twice as much and you'll double your income while you watch
them die just as fast.  Now you want to be able to put out a 'safe
cigarette' to prompt even more people to start smoking.  And wait let
me guess you want immunity from lawsuits when we find out ten years
down the road that your 'safe' cigarettes weren't safe at all!"

"Angus!"  I shouted.  "Sit down!"

"I won't sit down!"  He pointed at his anti tobacco colleagues.  "And
you you might be able to pull off some backroom deal to keep your jobs
and your funding, but I'm going to make it my mission in life to expose
you for what you are."  He was forced to pause to catch his breath, and
I used the opportunity to speak.

"I have to agree with Angus.  This kind of thing isn't going to fly
anymore.  By putting legal protection in place, we're going to save
billions of dollars in legal expenses, our stock price is going to go
through the roof, and we're going to be able to operate in a
predictable environment.  In return, I think we can offer some real
concessions that are going to have real consequences.  And in the
process, maybe shake off a twenty-five-year reputation of evil."

Scalia looked down at me, squinting behind his John Lennon glasses.
Then he sat back down.

Forty-Seven.

I'd spent the last half hour walking around my old floor at Terra's
headquarters, peeking into cubicles trying to remember the faces of the
people who'd worked in them.  Everything looked as though it had been
abandoned in a panic, though I knew that was a misinterpretation of the
facts.  A couple of days ago when my father took over, the employees
had started to return, bringing with them their knickknacks,
photographs, pillows, and the like.  The suddenness and uncertainty of
the strike had left the floor empty of people and full of partially
unpacked boxes.

I still wasn't sure that I should be there which was why I was hiding
out on an empty floor.  My new cadre of corporate spies had been giving
me hourly reports of my father's desperate but ultimately doomed
struggle to hold on to power.  It had become kind of depressing, and I
wanted to put a stop to it to convince him that it was in his best
interests to join me and Larry in continuing Paul Trainer's grand
social experiment.  Things were getting dangerous for everyone, and
there was safety in numbers.  United we stand ... I didn't have an
appointment, but talking my way past the executive-floor guards turned
out to be easy.  A little too easy, actually.  I felt myself slowing as
I padded across the thick carpet, wanting to put off the coming
confrontation as long as I could.

"Trevor!  How you doin', boy?"

I stopped short, but was reluctant to acknowledge the familiar voice.

"What's the matter?  Cat got your tongue?"

"What are you doing here, Paul?"

Trainer was sitting in an empty cubicle wearing a grin so wide that it
seemed to extend past the edges of his face.

"Goddamn, son!  I knew you wouldn't let me down.  Brilliant!  You had
it in you the whole time I saw it right off.  You really are worth your
weight in gold."

I should have seen this coming, and honestly on some level I probably
had.  With the strike in place, the board found their control over the
company's destiny tenuous at best.  Add to that the concessions I
planned to make, and Trainer's return had been pretty much
inevitable.

"I hear you got all kinds of ideas these days, Trevor."  He got up and
walked over to me, slapping me on the back.  "You really are a kick in
the ass!  Now, come on."

"Where are we going?"

"To take our place in history."

My FATHER was on the phone when I walked in.  He looked surprised and
gave me a glare that didn't bite anymore, but didn't hang up.  When
Paul came in behind me, though, the handset hit the cradle pretty
fast.

"What the hell "

"You're sitting in my chair," Trainer said.  He didn't sound angry, but
his voice did have a coldness to it that I hadn't heard before.

"Your chair?"

"You screwed up bad, Edwin.  What made you think I'd just roll over and
let you take my company from me?"

Probably the fact that it was exactly what he'd done.  If I remembered
correctly, Larry Mann and I were the people who'd stood up and
fought.

At the first hint of personal danger, Trainer had cut loose everything
and saved himself.

"This company is on the verge of bankruptcy," my father protested. "You
were driving it under!  There's no way the government is going to give
us full protection.  I didn't take this company from you.  I saved it
from you."

"Took it.  Saved it.  Doesn't really matter anymore.  The board's
reinstated me.  You're out."

"What?  I "

"Don't talk, Edwin!  Just get the hell out of my office.  You're
fired!"

I could see my father's knuckles turn white as he squeezed the edges of
the desk.

"You can't fire me.  My family started "

"You've got ten seconds to get your ass out of my sight before I call
Security."

Trainer had the good manners not to count out loud, but he seemed to
mean what he said.  My dad stood his ground for three or four more
seconds and then came out from behind the desk and headed for the door.
He didn't look at me as he passed.

"Damn, that felt good!"  Trainer said, sitting down in his chair and
sending my father's things cascading onto the carpet with a sweep of
his hand.  "And what about you, Trevor?  This is a red-letter day, huh?
If I remember the way your trust is written, you just got all your
father's money and his house."

"I don't want my father fired," I heard myself say.

"What?"

"I don't want him fired, Paul.  He's still my father and I have my mom
to think about.  I don't want him fired."

Trainer screwed his old face up, clearly not understanding my
willingness to walk away from a perfectly good piece of revenge.

"Do I look like I work in Personnel?"  he said finally.  "You're an
executive vice president.  You want to rehire him, then rehire him. But
not in Legal.  If I ever lay eyes on that worthless son of a bitch
again, he's gone permanently.  You understand?"

I nodded.

"Now what do you say we call the White House and set us up a meeting?
It's time to finish this thing."

When I walked out of Trainer's office a few minutes later, there had
still been no acknowledgment that a couple of days ago he'd completely
screwed me without a second thought.  And while there had been a time
when his charisma and the sheer intensity with which he ignored that
simple historical fact would have confused me, that time was long
past.

I found my father in his office yelling into the phone.

"I don't give a shit if he's in a meeting!  Tell him that Edwin Barnett
is on the phone and it's urgent!"

He looked up at me and I leaned against his doorjamb, unwilling to
enter.

"What do you want?"

"Hang up the phone, Dad."

"What?"

"Hang up the goddamn phone!"

He jerked fully upright and, after a few seconds of pointless defiance,
did as I said.

"Jesus Christ, Trevor.  No one will take my calls.  I'll lose
everything ... Are you proud of yourself?  What about your mother?
She'll lose everything, too.  Don't forget that.  If I go down, she
goes "

"I'm rehiring you, Dad," I said before he could start begging.  That
was an experience I could definitely live without.

"What?"

"You're rehired, okay?  I'll have our lawyers draw up a contract
that'll put you on the books as an employee until your trust is
distributed.  But you've got to get out of here now and never come
back.  If I ever hear any thing about you trying to contact a board
member again, I'll fire you and take everything.  And if Paul Trainer
ever so much as lays eyes on you again, he's assured me that he'll fire
you on the spot.  Do you understand?"

"Trevor, I "

"Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Trainer's back," I said quietly into the phone.

"I guess we all knew that was coming," Anne said.  "I suppose he heard
about your meeting with the board and the anti tobacco people.  What
happened to your dad?"

"Trainer fired him and I rehired him.  He'll get to hold on to his
trust, but he won't have anything to do with the company anymore."

"That's good, Trevor.  That's the right thing to do.  He is your
father."

"I guess."

"So what are you going to do now that Trainer's back in charge?"

"I don't know."

"Some good things came out of that meeting yesterday, Trevor.  Some
things that could work.  Don't give up now."

"Don't worry; I'm through giving up.  Is Larry there?"

"Yeah, you want to talk to him?"

"Please."

The line went silent for a few seconds, and then Larry picked up.

"Trevor!  I hear Trainer's crawled back out from under his rock."

"Yup."

"How's that going to work out?"

"I suppose it's up to you."

"Me?  How you figure?"

"Who are you backing, Larry?  Me or Trainer?"

Mann laughed into the phone.  "Now you're getting it, Trevor.  Good for
you.  I'll tell you this: Every time I shake hands with Paul Trainer, I
count my fingers afterward.  You're my horse, Trevor.  You are."

Forty-Eight.

This time our escort didn't seem as pretty, and I could see the wear
patterns in the carpet.  It was a Saturday and the White House was
quiet, providing me an opportunity to try to figure out why I was
there.  I'd hatched ten different plans to get myself included in this
meeting but, in the end, hadn't needed to use any of them.

It had seemed reasonable to assume that Trainer would try to freeze me
out at the last minute so he could present his rather one-sided agenda
without complications.  Maybe he thought I'd just sit there with my
mouth hanging open like I had last time.  But still, why take the
chance?  He didn't need me.

President Anderson, dressed in khaki slacks and a golf shirt, was
standing in the middle of his office when we walked in.  Trainer had
opted for a black suit and resembled the mortician from a horror movie
I'd once seen.  Pet Semetary?  No.  Phantasm.

"How are you, Paul?"  Anderson said, taking Trainer's hand.  "I see you
managed to come out on top again.  Why did I never doubt it?"

"It's good to see you, Mr.  President."  Trainer motioned toward me
with his head.  "You remember Trevor Barnett, don't you?"

"Of course."

Anderson's grip was firmer and longer than I remembered.

"I'm so glad you could make it."

His tone and inflection answered the question I'd been contemplating:
He'd requested that I be there.  But why?

"Well, Paul," Anderson said, taking a seat on a sofa in the middle of
the room and motioning for us to sit on the one across from him.  "You
seem to have managed to force the showdown everyone wanted to avoid.  I
suppose congratulations are in order?"

"I guess not everyone wanted to avoid it, Mr.  President."

Anderson nodded.  "I'll ask you again to put your people back to work
while we try to hash this thing out.  Call it a cooling-off period."

"I don't think I can, sir.  This strike was called with absolutely no
involvement from me.  I have no control over Mann and the union."

To my surprise, Anderson turned toward me.  "What do you think, Trevor?
Can we shelve this strike for a little while?"

"Uh ... I don't think so, Mr.  President.  Larry's aware that once
everyone's back to work, it'll be really hard to get them to walk off
again and even harder to reestablish support from the Teamsters.  The
Tobacco Workers are looking for a solution that'll preserve their way
of life going forward, and they're willing to fight hard for it."

"You bet they will," Trainer said, but Anderson ignored him and stayed
focused on me.  It seemed that he understood what I hadn't managed to
fully grasp: Trainer wasn't the power in this room.  I was.

"Come on, Trevor.  You have Larry Mann's ear we all know that.  What
can I do for you that would persuade you to talk him into making this
thing go away for a little while?  He'll listen to you."

I shook my head.  "The reason I have the trust of labor is because I've
been straight with them.  If I stray from that, Larry'll see right
through me and it'll get us nowhere.  I just don't think we're going to
be able to make this disappear."

"No, I suppose not," Anderson said.  "Larry Mann's a hard person to
influence."

I'd discovered that the government had subtly threatened our board
members with things like audits, in-depth examinations of their legal
and business dealings, and even scrutiny into the activities of some of
their less-than-angelic children in order to get them to oust Trainer
and get cigarettes flowing again.  I'm sure they'd tried the same thing
with Larry and found, like Terra had, that he was squeaky clean and
truly concerned with the welfare of his people.

Anderson leaned back in the sofa's cushions and crossed his legs.
"Okay.  What should we be looking to accomplish in this meeting?"

"I think we should be looking to work out a deal, Mr.  President."

"Damn right," Trainer said, a little too loudly.

"And that deal," Anderson said, "starts with ironclad immunity from
lawsuits relating to smoking."

Trainer nodded.

"Okay, let's assume for a moment that's possible.  What are you going
to give me in return?"

Paul shot me a cautioning glance before he spoke.  "A billion dollars
over the next ten years in safer-cigarette research and a significant
increase in the industry's funding of the battle against teen smoking,
as well as support for stronger legal penalties for underage
smokers."

"And I assume there will be a thousand pages of legal strings attached
to those, um, compromises?"

"Well, obviously it needs to be a deal that makes sense ..."

"Okay.  What else?"

"What else?"  Trainer said, feigning shock that anyone would even ask
such an absurd question.  "Mr.  President, those are enormous
concessions that have the potential to significantly impact our
business .. ."

Anderson laughed at that.  "Who do you think you're talking to,
Paul?"

Trainer shrugged his skinny shoulders.  "I'm not sure what else to say.
I'd be irresponsible to give up more.  Maybe we should pull back and
give this thing a little more thought get together again in a few
months."

A bald-faced threat.  A few months would take us right up to the
elections.

Anderson didn't immediately react.  After what seemed like a long time,
he turned back to me.  "What do you think, Trevor?  Should I take that
deal?"

I could feel Trainer's eyes burning into the side of my face.

"No, actually, I think that's a pretty bad bargain for everyone."

"I'm sorry, Mr.  President, can I have a word with Trevor outside?"

"In a minute," Anderson said.

Trainer fidgeted like a child.  "You understand that Trevor is someone
I just brought in recently.  He has no real "

"Paul," Anderson cautioned, "Trevor has the floor."

I cleared my throat.  "If you take that deal, I can guarantee you that
Angus Scalia and the rest of the anti tobacco lobby will come out hard
against the safer-cigarette research paint it as a ploy to convince
people to start smoking and smoke more.  They also won't accept any
funding for the fight against teen smoking if it's tied to company
profits and Paul will insist on that."

Trainer snorted.  "They'll accept anything we give them."

"Not this time, Paul."

"So what do you propose, Trevor?"

"He can't propose anything," Trainer said.  "He has no power to speak
for this industry other than the power I give him."

I shrugged.  "I guess I take the opposite view.  Who do you speak for,
Paul?  The board was happy to sacrifice you, and you have no
relationship at all with labor.  You're only back in your office
because of me."

His jaw dropped.  And I mean this literally: He was sitting there, five
feet from the president of the United States, with his mouth hanging
open.  What he undoubtedly wanted to do was tell me that I was just
some kid he'd used to dupe the public and put in the line of any
potential gunfire, but he knew it probably wouldn't play very well in
front of Anderson.

"Mr.  President, I have the complete support of the board now.  No one
and I mean no one thinks that Trevor Barnett is capable of running
Terra or taking a leadership role in the industry."

I mimicked Anderson by crossing my legs and leaning back into the sofa
cushions.  "The board brought Paul here back because they're afraid
I'll give away too much.  A problem for them but a benefit for you, Mr.
President."

"I'd have to agree," Anderson said.  "Give me some specifics,
Trevor."

"Mr.  President "

"Be quiet, Paul!  Go ahead, Trevor."

"We'll accept combined state and federal taxes that will bring pack
prices up to five dollars nationally.  That'll create a real deterrent
to smoking particularly by young people.  It'll also create billions of
dollars in additional tax income."

Anderson frowned.  "I can't dictate to the states how much they tax
you.  Hell, it's seven fifty a pack in New York right now."

"New York will have to back off.  But I'm guessing they'll not want to
be the spoilers on this thing when they've got a number of guys up for
reelection."

"Okay," Anderson said.  "Go on."

"We'll accept that the protection we get from suits will only be for
people who started smoking after the government warning labels were put
on the packs.  Anyone who started before that can still sue us, but
that right won't accrue to the relatives of people who've died from
smoking-related illnesses.  We think that a fair compromise.  Clearly
people did get addicted while we were playing down the dangers, but if
we allow relatives to sue for pain and suffering we'll end up fighting
thousands of suits by people who say they're depressed because one of
their ancestors died from pipe smoking during the Civil War."

Anderson nodded but didn't say anything.

"And we'll need a cap on annual punitive damages.  They're getting out
of hand."

"How much?"

"I'll have to talk to my people, but the number's going to be really
low.  We're already paying out more than we made from 1950 to present
to the states.  We've been punished, and it's time to move on."

He nodded again, prompting me to continue.

"We'll agree to a nationwide ban on all print advertising "

Not surprisingly, that was more than Trainer could take.  He grabbed my
arm and dragged me to my feet.  Anderson didn't say anything, so I
allowed myself to be pulled over to a far wall.

"What the fuck are you doing, boy?"  he said in a harsh, smoker's
whisper.  "Still trying to buff off that soul of yours?"

"What I'm doing, Paul, is making this a company that's going to be
viable in the twenty-first century, not the eighteenth.  Print ads
account for six percent of our marketing budget and about ninety
percent of our bad press.  We need to clean the slate here and start
over."

"You don't have any fucking idea what we need to do!  For the rest of
this meeting you're just going to sit there and shut up.  Do you
understand me?"

I yanked my arm free.  "Why don't you go back to cowering in that
greenhouse of yours, Paul?  Because if we go head-to-head on this and
you lose, I'll make it my life's ambition to see that you spend what's
left of your life driving around in a beat-up RV trying to keep ahead
of your ex-wives."

I couldn't believe I'd just threatened Paul Trainer.  Apparently, he
couldn't either.  Unsure what to do, he turned back toward Anderson,
who had been watching us from his sofa.

"Mr.  President "

"I'll tell you what, Paul," the president said.  "Why don't you excuse
us for a little while."

Like magic, a Secret Service agent came through the door and escorted
Paul Trainer out into the waiting area.

Anderson pointed to the sofa across from him, again and I sat.

"You were saying something about a ban on print media?"

"Uh-yeah.  I mean, yes sir.  We'll adhere to a voluntary ban, which I
think you'll agree is a huge concession ..."

"I do agree.  But in my experience, huge concessions always come with
huge strings attached.  What do you want in return?"

"Ironclad protection against secondhand-smoke suits, too."

A slight frown.

"Sir, as hard as they've tried, neither the World Health Organization
nor the American Cancer Society has been able to tie environmental
tobacco smoke to health issues.  Without this protection, we've gained
nothing.  The lawyers will just shift their focus."

His frown didn't deepen but neither did it disappear.

"We're also willing to make a one-time donation of three hundred
million dollars spread out among various antismoking groups," I
continued.  "There will be no strings attached to this at all it's not
a series of payments based on our profitability, or anything else. They
just get the money."

He nodded.  "Is that it?"

I tried to achieve an easy smile, but I don't think it worked.  "We
want teen smoking decriminalized."

He blinked a few times "What?"

This one was for Anne.  I guess she'd been stung more than I thought
when I suggested that the antismoking lobby's real purpose was more to
stand on the moral high ground than to reducing smoking.  She'd decided
to take a few political lumps in an effort to make a difference.

"Every study shows that criminalization makes teens smoke more," I
said.  "The higher the fines, the higher the smoking rates.  The
antismoking groups all agree that it's time to decriminalize teen
smoking and work with kids on a grassroots level.  They think they can
make real inroads here."

Anderson appeared to be in pain.  "I know everything you're saying is
true, Trevor, but what's the point?  It just muddles the issue."

"But it offers a real chance for reducing underage smoking."

"It's too complicated to get across in a sound bite.  People won't
understand."

"Angus Scalia is heavily behind this provision, Mr.  President, and the
press loves him.  Combine that with an industry-supported initiative to
get the smoking age raised to nineteen to keep tobacco out of the high
schools, and I think we can get this done."

Anderson sighed quietly.  "Fine.  But this is your responsibility,
Trevor.  I'm telling you up-front that I'll back away from this in a
second if there's any backlash."

"I understand, sir."

His expression turned thoughtful.  "You're giving away a lot, Trevor
more than you need to, maybe.  Are you sure you can sell this to your
people?"

I nodded.  "We're giving up a lot, but we're also getting a lot.  Some
of those concessions might eventually translate into a decline in
sales, but it'll be a slow, steady decline.  A certain future, even if
it's not an ideal one, is pretty attractive right now."

Anderson was silent for a little while.  Finally he stood and offered
his hand.  "Okay, Trevor.  You've sold me.  You put your people back to
work, and I'll throw my full weight behind this."

I have to admit, he was good.  He'd spoken with such casual authority
that I almost agreed without thinking.

"I'm afraid not, sir.  When this is signed into law, then we'll go back
to work."

Forty-Nine.

Paul Trainer had been left in the Oval Office's waiting room for more
than half an hour, only to be called in to shake the president's hand
and be dismissed.  He stalked along behind our escort, clenching and
unclenching his fists, not saying a word.  I guessed that was because
he was busy formulating an elaborate plan to have me killed.

We were deposited unceremoniously in the parking area, and Trainer
waited until we were alone before he let loose.

"If you think you're going to take this company away from me, you've
got another thing coming, boy.  Don't believe the legend I've given you
I picked you because you'd bend over and do anything I told you to. And
because you were stupid enough to look sincere doing it."

I was glad he'd finally been able to get that off his chest.  A few
more minutes and I think he might have stroked out.

"I'm going to destroy you," he continued.  "Do you understand me?  And
I don't just mean you're going to lose your job and your trust I mean
I'm going to see to it that you lose everything!  You'll never get a
job paying more than fifteen grand a year as long as you live.  I
promise you that."

My brow knitted a bit as I considered his words.  Not the threats I
didn't really care about them but the thing about me taking the company
away from him.  Honestly, until he mentioned it, I'd never considered
that I might end up running Terra.  I was completely unqualified and,
frankly, completely unmotivated.  In order to hold this deal together,
though, it was possible that at the ripe old age of thirty-two, I might
have to insert myself as the CEO of one of the world's largest
corporations.

I must have smiled at the thought, because Trainer blew yet another a
gasket.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"  he shouted, ignoring the fact
that we were almost certainly being watched.  "You think you can take
me on?  Is that what you think?"

"Retire, Paul.  Go play some golf and live the good life.  You're
entitled."

"This isn't over, boy.  This ain't anywhere near over.  You don't have
a chance."

"Wake up, Paul!  I've got the union in my pocket and every politician
in the South who has any kind of instinct for self-preservation is
going to follow those votes right off a cliff if I tell them to.  The
anti tobacco lobby is going to back me, the president is going to back
me ..."

Trainer opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.  "Have I
forgotten anyone?  Oh, right, our shareholders.  With a long-term
solution to our legal problems, I can pretty much guarantee our stock
prices are headed straight up.  So they love me, too.  Who's that leave
you with?  Some militant smoker living in a cabin in Idaho?"

"The board won't "

"Jesus Christ, Paul I just got the government off their backs and
everyone in America on their side.  What do you have to offer?
Nothing."

"You think so, huh?  Don't get too comfortable, boy."

Trainer suddenly burst forward and leaped into the back of the
limousine, shouting "Go!  Go!"  before slamming the door behind him.
The driver shot me a frightened glance through his open window but
didn't move.

It was sort of sad: Trainer yelling "Go!  Go!"  and the limo just
sitting there with the engine idling.

I waved the driver on and watched the car glide away without me.
Trainer was undoubtedly already dialing his cell phone and formulating
a plan that would allow him to claw his way hack into power.  By
leaving me standing in the middle of D.C. without a clear way to get
home, he figured he'd delay my efforts to counter him.

I sighed quietly and took the footpath through the gates and out to the
road.  I found a bench on a corner a few blocks away and sat there
watching the cars and people go by.

About half an hour had passed when a large white limousine glided to a
stop next to the curb in front of me.  The back window descended
smoothly, and Anne stuck her head out.  "Need a ride, sailor?"

"Nice car," I said.  "I was expecting a beat-up Ford Fiesta."

She threw the door open.  "I figured it's company money, so why not
travel in style?"

"That's what you figured, huh."  I slid in next to her and closed the
door.  The glass separating us from the front was heavily smoked, and I
couldn't see even a hint of the driver as we merged into traffic.

"So," Anne said, pushing me back in the seat and straddling me, "how's
thePrez?"

"He's okay."  I was finding it a little hard to concentrate on our
conversation in this position.  "He wasn't happy about the teen-smoking
thing, but it was hard for him to argue since I'd pretty much given
away the farm at that point."

"I knew you wouldn't let me down."

"Did you get the welfare system going again?"

I'd put her in charge of getting Trainer's cheap food and loan program
back on line.  There was just no way you could be too popular with the
union.

"All done."

"And the cigarettes?"

"I put Larry back in charge of security for Terra's warehouses.  I'm
guessing they're pilfering smokes by the truckload as we speak."

I slid my arms around her and pulled her close.  Our lips were nearly
touching now, and I glanced up to confirm that the driver couldn't see
us.  "Was there anything else?  I forget..."

"Just your press conference."

That would be the one where I was going to blather on about how much
the government was looking out for people's interests and wax rhapsodic
about the new era of honesty and philanthropy that I was going to usher
in.  After that, Scalia and the other anti tobacco pundits, as well as
a few handpicked Wall Street analysts, would hit the talk-show circuit
and effusively support the deal.  I'd already brought back our
publicity and marketing people and they were working 'round the
clock.

"When is it?"

"Four o'clock."

"Fine, whatever."  I leaned forward and tried to kiss her but she
pulled back, smiling mischievously.  "We dumped the five million kids
smoking campaign.  You want to see what we're going to replace it
with?"

"I could wait, actually."

"No you can't."

She grabbed a rolled-up poster from the floor and pulled the rubber
band off it with all the drama of a striptease.  I rose up on my elbows
and examined the reasonably, but not spectacularly, pretty woman
centered on it.  She was staring at a lit cigarette in her hand with a
mix of suspicion and fear, holding it slightly away from her as though
it might attack at any minute.  Across the bottom, in big, bold
lettering, the slogan read: you're

ON YOUR OWN, BABY.

EPILOGUE

TWO YEARS LATER AS I WRITE THIS, THE MEMORY OF EVERY

thing that happened is much clearer than the memory of who I used to
be.  So much has changed.

The bill protecting the tobacco industry was signed into law an amazing
forty-three days after I met with the president.  And because it was
partially a clever clarification of the existing laws on the subject
(thanks to my good friend Dan Alexander), it had a somewhat retroactive
effect.  The result was that a good ninety percent of the suits against
the industry were dropped as the attorneys bringing them saw the
chances of recouping their outlay sink to almost zero.  Don't worry
about them, though they landed on their feet and already have the
fast-food, candy, and soft-drink industries quaking in their boots.

The infamous Montana suit wasn't dropped and we lost, but the judge
bowed to political pressure and reduced the award to an amount that the
industry could bond off.  And while our appeal isn't yet completed, it
seems almost certain that we'll win.  Actually, the plaintiffs'
attorneys made a quiet offer to settle, but we decided to go ahead and
try to kill it in the courts.

Anne is now the co-director of Smokeless Youth and the driving force
behind their highly visible Team Teen project.  The stiff legal
penalties aimed at kids are all gone now, and Anne is working in an
advisory capacity to Team Teen, the actual head of which is a very
bright and dedicated seventeen-year-old named Cindi who has struck fear
into the heart of Big Tobacco like no one before her.  There are no
real numbers yet but increased prices, combined with an ad campaign
depicting kids buying smokes from dimwitted adult store clerks and the
slogan "You're smart enough to get them, are you smart enough not to?"
seems to be striking a chord with young people all over America.

Paul Trainer put up a fierce, but ultimately pointless, fight to retain
the helm of Terra.  To his credit, it took him only a few days to
realize that his time was over and that the few people who bothered to
take his calls at all were just patronizing him.  Did I make good on my
threat to leave him fleeing his ex-wives in a '72 VW van?  Nah.  He's
living in a ten-thousand-square-foot house in New Mexico.  I understand
that he's shooting in the low nineties and that he cheats.

My father is doing roughly the same, though I understand he cheats even
worse.  The employment contract I had drawn up allowed him to keep his
trust, which will soon be fully distributed to him.  I haven't seen or
spoken to him in more than a year and a half.  This is also true of
Darius, though not because I'm still mad at him.  I've just outgrown
him.

Larry Mann is still the head of the Tobacco Workers' Union and still a
champion of the changes we put in place.  Terra and the other companies
have stabilized and stock prices have skyrocketed, which is good for
everyone, I think.

What about me?  In the end, I actually did take the job as CEO of Terra
for a short time.  The first month and a half of my tenure were
consumed with lobbying, and the next three were spent instituting the
concessions I'd promised fully and fairly.  The rest of my time at
Terra was spent finding a replacement.  Believe it or not, I managed to
convince the CEO of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream a brilliant guy and
die-hard Grateful Dead fan to take the job.  He is now in the hilarious
and surprisingly effective process of turning Terra into the employee-
and environment-friendly corporate citizen its name suggests it is.  If
he isn't careful, he's going to make Big Tobacco so popular people will
start smoking just to support it.

Not surprisingly, I jumped ship the minute the new CEO was settled in
though I have to admit to my fall was broken by a golden parachute so
large I hesitate to describe it here.  Let's just say that I now have
the ability to write much larger checks than I could before and I no
longer feel the need to sign them in red.

Shortly after my departure, and based solely on the strength of my
chili pepper and wild mushroom souffle, I was accepted to France's most
prestigious culinary school.  My graduation four months ago was one of
the proudest days of my life.

Me and Annie?  Our relationship turned out to be one of those rare
things that's even better in reality than in fantasy.  No, we aren't
married yet, but that's the result of a lack of time rather than a lack
of commitment.  I tried to convince her to quit her job and come to
Paris with me but she'd refused, citing all the lives she was saving
and offering to keep Nicotine for me.  Still such a believer.

We moved in together when I returned to the States, though between her
travel for SY and me starting a business, we haven't seen much of each
other.  The doors of my restaurant which reviewers are calling one of
the best in the Carolinas finally opened a few weeks ago, and I'm
already pretty certain that it has no hope of ever turning a profit.  I
don't really care, though I've got more money than I could spend in two
lifetimes.

Oh, and at Anne's insistence, I finally gave up smoking for good.  It
turned out that it was easy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kyle Mills lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he spends time skiing,
rock climbing, and writing.  He is the best-selling author of Sphere of
Influence, Rising Phoenix, Storming Heaven, Free Fall and Burn
Factor.