Cushing was up later than the others.
Long after Fabrini and Menhaus shook their unease and nodded off and George finally gave in to sleep and Saks and Soltz called it a night, he was still awake. Awake and restless.
He wasn’t like the others, not really. And this wasn’t because he held some elitist notion that since he was educated and they weren’t, he was a better man. For he wasn’t better, just different. He wasn’t a grader operator or a dozer jockey like the others. He came under the guise of being an office manager, a clerk, the guy who was to be the go-between for Saks’s crew and the mine people. It was his job to see that the crew got everything they wanted and when they wanted it.
And this was true.
Within limits.
He was the only one of the crew who knew Franklin Fisk personally. Saks had dealt with him and his people on several other projects in South America. But that was strictly a business relationship. Cushing, on the other hand, knew Fisk very well, had worked for him for some ten years now. He had been instrumental in implementing the multimillion dollar marketing strategy of Fisk’s overseas interests. Fisk, it so happened, was also married to Cushing’s sister. No one on the crew knew this. No one would ever know it.
No one would ever know the truth.
And the truth was that Cushing was a spy. That he had been hand-picked by Fisk himself to keep an eye on Saks. Saks was rumored to be a nasty one. Yes, he got the job done, always brought the projects in under budget and within schedule. But rumors had it he was an alcoholic. That he spent his days and nights drinking in his tent while his men labored. That he was physically abusive of his crew. That he often treated local workers like slave labor. On his last project, Saks had been accused of raping a village girl. He had also been accused of causing the deaths of three local men in a blasting accident. The story went that Saks had set the charges to clear a shelf of rock that was obstructing the road there were laying… but neglected to inform the workers.
Saks was, in essence, a public relations nightmare.
The sort of man who could give Fisk Technologies and its parent, Fisk International, a bad reputation. Still, Fisk used him. He was always the lowest bidder. But on this job, Cushing was put in place to watch him.
Cushing didn’t like it.
But he owed everything to Fisk.
So he was going to watch and learn.
Of course, if Saks learned about any of it and the rumors were true, Cushing was a dead man. Crocodiles and snakes would be the least of his worries.
Laying there, he thought about death.
Felt it reaching out for him…