Night Moves

Chapter 1

The palace, whose first royal occupant had been Henry VIII, back in the 1500s, was huge. The stone buildings themselves covered more than six acres, with ten times that much walled-in lawn and gardens around the structures. The chambers were mostly big, with high ceilings, tall windows, and a couple had stone fireplaces large enough to walk into without bumping your head. Most of the rooms were empty, save for giant wall hangings and baroque chandeliers. A few chambers had monstrous canopied beds or chairs and desks in them. There were art galleries, with age-muddied paintings hung. Much of the section they were in at the moment, called the King's Apartments, had burned in a sudden fire in the mid- 1980s and had been since restored to what it supposedly looked like in the 1700s.

Alex Michaels glanced around in awe. It was hard to imagine that anybody had ever actually lived in such a place.

It had cost them fifteen euros each to be admitted to the palace, after the ride on the tube from London. They'd strolled across the Thames on the Hampton Court Bridge, to the main entrance. Michaels had traveled over the years, more since he had become commander of the FBI stand-alone unit, Net Force, but he had somehow never made it to England until now. He and Toni had decided to add some vacation time to the week they had been allotted for the International Computer Crime Conference. They needed some time off; things had gotten a little rocky on a personal level the last few weeks.

So here they were, in the huge house of kings and queens, but, vast as it was, Hampton Court Palace was not big enough to contain Toni Fiorella's simmering anger. Michaels expected it to burst out any second, to blast him and whatever room they were in to a blackened crisp. They weren't married, but it seemed the honeymoon period was coming to an end, as much as he did not want it to happen.

Fifteen euros: that was a lot to be allowed to walk around inside a musty castle for a couple of hours. If it hadn't been for the calculator built into the electronic virgil on his belt, Michaels would never have been able to figure out what that was in real money. Multiplying fractions was not his favorite pastime.

He pointed out the security beam generator to Toni, inset into the support that held the drooping velvet ropes that were supposed to keep the tourists from sitting in the antique chairs. "Step over that, I bet we'll hear an alarm scream."

Toni said nothing.

Oh, Lord, what have I done now? "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

Michaels drew in a long, slow breath and let it escape silently as they walked along. A costumed man who looked as if he might be from Henry's court stood under a painting of an ugly couple and two much better-looking dogs, explaining to a tour group the significance of the painting. The costumed man had what Michaels had been told was a posh accent, nary a dropped aitch, very upper class.

Before he and Toni had become lovers, Michaels had been married and divorced. There was a way that a woman said, "I'm fine," the tone clipped and brusque, that meant she was anything but fine. He had learned not to go any farther down that road unless he was really ready to hear what was wrong, sometimes at a decibel level equal to standing in front of the speakers at a This Is Your Brain on Drugs rock concert. Would Toni yell at him in the Great Hall? Or would she wait until they were in the smaller Tudor rooms where Cardinal Wolsey once pursued his studies? Right at the moment, if Michaels dared to touch her, he was almost sure his fingers would get burned. She was pissed, and he was pretty sure it was at him.

Why wasn't life simple? Two people love each other, they get together, and live happily ever after?

Probably what Anne Boleyn thought when she hooked up with the fat man, you reckon? said his inner voice.

He told his inner voice to shut up.

She waited until they were outside, strolling across a damp and chilly lawn toward the North Gardens and the carefully tended hedge maze before she said anything. He was watching her peripherally, admiring her athletic walk, her beautiful face and figure. She had been his assistant since he'd been at Net Force, and she was very good at her job. She was also almost a dozen years younger than he was, a bright, tough, nice Italian girl from the Bronx who was an adept at an Indonesian martial art called pentjak silat. She had been teaching it to him, and he was getting better at it, but if push came to shove and she was really angry, she could wipe the floor with him and never break a sweat. That was an odd sensation, knowing the woman you loved could kick your ass if she felt like it.

When she spoke, her voice was quiet, even, no anger apparent in it. "Why did you send Marshall to the OCIC meeting in Kabul?"

Michaels took another deep breath. Why hadn't he sent her? Because Afghanistan was not a place he wanted Toni to be. It was backward, women were fourth-class citizens, after men, boys, and horses, and there were frequent terrorist attacks on foreigners, particularly Americans. He did not want to put her at risk. But he couldn't say that straight out. Instead, he said, "Marshall wanted to go. I didn't think you did."

"I didn't, particularly," she said.

"Well, so there it is. You didn't have to. No problem, right?"

He should be so lucky. She said, "I was up. I should have gone."

"But you just said you didn't want to go."

She stopped walking and stared at him. God, she was beautiful, even when she was mad at him. Maybe even more so when she was mad at him.

"That's not the point. I was up; you should have sent me, whether I wanted to or not. Why didn't you?"

He had a pretty good memory, a necessary requisite for prevarication, but even so, when it got right down to it, Michaels was not a very good liar. Oh, sure, he could tell somebody their hair looked nice when it didn't, or smile and nod at a superior's bad taste in clothes without blurting it out, but beyond simple and harmless white lies designed to spare feelings, he had no real interest in games of deceit. She had caught him, he had tried to slip past and couldn't, so he wasn't going to try to lie his way out of it. He shook his head and went for the truth: "Because I didn't want to send you into a place where you might be at risk."

"That's what I thought." She started walking again.

He went after her. "Look, Toni, I love you. Is it so wrong to want to keep you out of harm's way?"

"For a lover, no. I'd be unhappy if you didn't want that. But for a colleague in the intelligence community, yes, it's wrong. You know I can take care of myself."

"Yes," he said. He knew, he'd seen that demonstrated a few times. She was better able to take care of herself when things got physical than he was, but even so, she wasn't Superwoman.

"I want you to treat me like one of the boys."

He smiled. "That would be a trick. I can't think of you that way, and if I did, well, I wouldn't be interested. I like girls. You in particular."

She gave him a tiny grin in return, a quick flash, so she wasn't totally pissed off at him. "I meant at the office. I very much like being treated as a woman when we're on our own time."

"I understand."

"Do you? You really need to, you know. I want you to hold my hand when we walk in the moonlight — but not when we're at work. You need to separate your personal life from your work life, Alex."

"Okay. I will. Next time you're up, you go, no matter where it is."

She flashed a bigger smile. "Good. Now, you suppose we might find some chocolate somewhere?"

They both laughed, and he felt a great sense of relief. Neither of them had been to England before, and one of the things they noticed early on was that there were chocolate candy machines everywhere: in stores, train stations, even pubs. It had become a running joke between them, finding chocolate. They both expected to gain thirty pounds and have their faces break out before they returned to the States.

His virgil played the first few bars of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man." He had an incoming telecom. He pulled the device from his belt and saw that the caller was from the office of the FBI's director.

"That's cute," Toni said, meaning the music. She waved her finger as if directing an orchestra.

"Jay must have sneaked into my office and reprogrammed the ringer again. Better than last time, when it was George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone."

"Ta dah dah dah dah dump!" Toni sang.

"Everybody I work with has a warped sense of humor," he said. "This is Alex Michaels."

"Please hold for the director," a secretary said.

Toni looked at him, and he held his hand over the virgil's microphone. "Boss."

"I sure wish Walt Carver hadn't had that heart attack," Toni said.

"I think he's glad he did. It gave him an excuse to retire and go fishing. It's only been a month; we should give her a chance—"

"Commander, this is Melissa Allison. I'm sorry to interrupt your vacation, but we have a situation of which you need to be aware."

Her face appeared on the virgil's liquid crystal display screen, so he tapped his send-visual mode and held the unit so he could see the virgil's cam thumbnail of his own face in the screen's corner.

Allison, forty-six, was a thin redhead with a cool-bordering-on-cold voice and demeanor. She was a political appointee, a lawyer with no experience in the field but an encyclopedic knowledge of where dozens of political bodies were buried. The rumor was that certain high-ranking members of congress had prevailed on the President to offer her the FBI directorship vacated by Walt Carver's mild cardiac event so she'd keep quiet about things better left that way. Outside of a couple of meetings and a few memos, Michaels hadn't had to deal with her yet.

"Go ahead."

"Some hours ago, an unidentified military force attacked a Pakistani train near the Indian border, killed a dozen guards, and then blew the train to pieces. The cargo was a top-secret shipment of electronic components on their way to be used in the Pakistani nuclear bomb program."

"I thought there was a nonproliferation treaty between Pakistan and India."

"There is, but neither country pays any attention to it. The government of Pakistan is convinced the attacking terrorist force was a special unit of the Indian Army."

"Do they have proof of this?"

"Not enough to start a war. Not yet — but they are looking hard."

Michaels looked at the tiny image of the director's face. "With all due respect, ma'am, what's this got to do with us? Shouldn't the spooks be on the hot seat?"

"They are, but if they and the Pakistanis can be believed, there was no way anyone could know about the train and what it carried. The terrorists had plenty of time to get into position for the ambush, and the Pakistanis say this wasn't possible."

"Obviously it was," Michaels said.

"The liaison with the CIA tells him there were only four people who knew about the shipment and the route. The crates were unmarked, and the workmen and train personnel who loaded and were delivering the materials didn't know what they were carrying."

"Coincidence, maybe? They attacked a train at random?"

"Nineteen trains passed that point in the twenty-four hours prior to the one that was destroyed. Only one carried anything of strategic importance."

"Then somebody told."

"The Pakistanis say not. Nobody had a chance to tell. Once the operation began, three of the four who knew were together, and the other one — who happens to be the head of their secret police — didn't get around to decoding the computer message telling him about the shipment until an hour before the attack. Some kind of computer failure on his end had his system down. Even if he had wanted to tell, there wasn't enough time."

"Somebody intercepted the message and broke the code, then," Michaels said.

"Which is why it concerns us," she said. "The problem there is, the security encryption was supposedly bulletproof, a factored number hundreds of digits long. According to the CIA, it would take a SuperCray running full time, day and night, about a million years to break the code."

Great, Michaels thought. He said, "I'll have my people look into it."

"Good. Keep me informed."

Her picture disappeared as she broke the connection.

Toni, who had been listening, shook her head. "Not possible," she said.

"Right. The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer. Come on, let's go see the maze."

"You going to call Jay?"

"It can wait a few more minutes."

Chapter 2

The waiter arrived with a Bombay gin and tonic and set it on the table next to the overstuffed leather chair where Lord Geoffrey Goswell sat reading the Times. The Japanese markets were going to hell in a handbasket, the American stock market was holding steady, and gold futures were up.

The weather forecast for London called for rain on the morrow.

Nothing about which to be concerned.

Goswell glanced up. He watched the servant bide a moment to see if there was anything else required, and gave the waiter a military nod. "Thank you, Paddington."

"Milord."

The waiter glided noiselessly away. Here was a good man, old Paddington. He'd had been delivering the paper and drinks here at the club for what? Thirty, thirty-five years? He was polite, efficient, knew his place, and never intruded. Would that all servants were half as well-mannered. A man to be remembered with a nice tip at Christmas, was Paddington.

Across the short stretch of dark and worn oval Oriental rug, reading a trash paper like the Sun or the New York Times or some such, Sir Harold Bellworth harrumphed and blew out a fragrant cloud of Cuban cigar smoke. He lowered his paper a bit and looked at Goswell. "Can't believe what the American President said today. I don't understand why they put up with that kind of bloody nonsense over there. If the PM did that, he would be tossed out on his ear, and rightly so."

Bellworth, eighty-two, was class of '47, thus eight years older than Goswell.

Goswell smiled politely at the older man. "Well, they're Americans now, aren't they?"

"Mmm, yes, of course." Here was a standard reply that answered neatly so many questions. There was the British way, and then there were all the… other ways. Well, they are Americans, aren't they? Or French, or German, or for God's sake, Spanish. What else could one expect from foreigners, save the wrong way of doing things?

"Mmph." Harry lifted the paper and went back to his reading.

Goswell glanced at the big, round clock over the bookcase. Half-past five already. He should have Paddington call Stephens, he supposed. It would be a slow drive to The Yews, especially on a Friday evening, with all the rabble streaming out of the city for their weekly two-day holiday, but there was no help for it. Normally, he would just stay at Portman House in the city until Saturday, then enjoy the leisurely drive to his estate in Sussex, but that scientist fellow of his, Peter Bascomb-Coombs, was arriving for dinner at half-nine, so there was no help for it. Given the traffic, Goswell would be lucky to make it in time as it was. He folded the financial section and put it next to his gin and tonic, picked up the drink, and took a large sip. Ah. He put the glass down.

A moment later, unbidden, Paddington appeared. "Milord?"

"Yes, have Stephens bring the car round, will you?"

"Of course, milord. Some tea and sandwiches for the trip?"

"No, I have a dinner when we get to the country." He waved one hand in airy dismissal.

Paddington left to find the chauffeur. Goswell stood, pulled his watch from his vest pocket, and checked its time against the club's clock.

Harry looked up from his paper again. "Off, are we?"

"Yes, a meeting with my scientist at the country house."

"Scientists." Harry delivered the word in the same way he would have said "thieves" or "whores." He shook his head. "Well. Cheerio, then. By the way, have you cut down that bloody yew behind the greenhouse yet?"

"Certainly not. I expect to nourish its roots with you any time now."

Harry gave a wheezy smoker's laugh. "I'll dance on your grave, you young upstart. And warm my hands from that bloody yew as it burns merrily in my fireplace, too."

The two men smiled. It was an old joke. Yews were often planted in graveyards and, because they seemed to always grow largest in such locations, it was thought that the minerals from the decomposing bodies were good for the plants' roots. The big yew behind the greenhouse on Goswell's estate was eighty-five feet tall, if it was an inch, and probably four hundred years old. He had been threatening to feed Harry to it for years.

He glanced at his watch. A minute or so fast, but close enough. The watch was a gold Waltham, of no great value, but it had belonged to his Uncle Patrick, who had died during the Blitz, and it had come to him as a lad. He had better timepieces that ran dead-on, Rolexes and Cartiers and a couple of the handmade Swiss things that cost as much as a new car. The Waltham was a simple machine. It did not offer the date nor the market news nor could it be held to one's ear and used as a telephone. It was no more than a watch, and he rather liked that.

He slipped the Waltham back into his vest pocket and started for the exit. By the time he reached the street, Stephens would have the '54 Bentley waiting. He preferred the Bentley to the Rolls, as well. It was basically the same automobile, without that ostentatious grill, and being ostentatious was not something a gentleman did, now was it?

He would listen to the BBC news on the way out of the city. See if the wogs in India and Pakistan had started shooting at each other over that little… entertainment he had arranged. That would be lovely, if they would just bomb each other back to the time of the Raj, and the Empire had to come back and bring them along to civilization again.

There would be justice, wouldn't it?

Jay Gridley rode the net, master of all he surveyed.

Right at the moment, he was in a VR — virtual reality — scenario he had designed especially for this new assignment Alex Michaels had called him about. In RW — the real world — he sat at his computer console inside Net Force HQ in Quantico, Virginia, his eyes and ears covered with input sensors, his hands and chest wired so that his smallest movements could be turned into control pulses. But in VR, Jay wore a pith helmet, khaki shorts, and a starched khaki shirt, along with knee-socks, stout walking shoes, and a Webley Mark III.38 revolver strapped around his waist. He sat upon the back of an Indian elephant, inside a howdah, next to the local rajah. Overhead, the afternoon sun broiled everything it saw, smiting men and beasts and vegetation alike with withering heat. Ahead of them, brown-skinned natives in loincloths beat upon metal plates with sticks, rattled rocks inside cans, and chanted loudly to spook and drive from the chest-high grasses the tiger who might be hidden therein.

Jay smiled at the image, knowing it was not politically correct, but he wasn't worried. He wasn't likely to run into anybody he knew while playing this scenario, and besides, he was half Thai, wasn't he? Once upon a time, one of his great-great-grandfathers or uncles would probably have been barefoot down there in the grass, in what had been Siam, making noise, praying to assorted gods that the tiger would go the other way. All things considered, it was better to be in the shaded little hut up on the back of a ten-foot-tall elephant, with a Nitro Express double rifle racked right next to you, than it was to be on the ground beating a plate with a stick. And there was that extra, a small boy perched on the elephant's rump waving a fan on the end of a big pole to provide a warm but welcome breeze for him and the rajah.

First class all the way. The only way to travel.

What Jay was actually hunting was information, but keyboarding or voxaxing queries for coded binary hex packets wasn't nearly as much fun as stalking a man-eating Bengal tiger.

Of course, they hadn't seen the big tiger yet, and the beaters had been thumping and rattling for a long time, relativistically speaking. The rajah was apologetic. "So sorry, sahib," he alliterated, but it wasn't his fault. You couldn't flush it out if it wasn't there.

Oh, yeah, there were lesser beasts running from the hunters. Jay had seen deer, pigs, all manner of slithering snakes, including a couple of eight-foot cobras, and even a young tiger, but not the big cat he'd hoped to find. The tiger had come and gone — maybe burning bright, but certainly leaving no easy trail — had gutted its prey and disappeared. The VR prey in this case was a goat inside a stainless steel and titanium cage with bars as big as a bodybuilder's legs. A tyrannosaur couldn't chop through those barriers, even if his big ole teeth were made from diamonds, no way, no how. The goat — actually an encrypted file giving the time, location, and other particulars of a train shipment in Pakistan early today — should have been monster-proof. But something had ripped the bars open as if they were overcooked noodles, gotten inside, and Mr. Goat was history.

Jay hadn't believed it at first. He thought surely somebody had managed to get a copy of the one-time key, which was how these encryptions worked, but after he'd gotten a look at the cage — the mathematical encryption — he could see it had been brute-forced open, no key involved. This was not some kid's DES, used to hide a porno file from his parents, but a decent military-grade encryption, and while not unbreakable in the long run, whoever had cracked it had done so in less than a day.

And that, of course, was just not possible. No computer on earth could do that. A dozen SuperCrays working in parallel might manage it in, oh, say, ten thousand years, but in the few hours since the message was sent and it was broken, it couldn't be done. Period. End of story. Here, let me tell you another one…

Jay took off his pith helmet and wiped the sweat off his forehead with one arm. Hot out here in the Punjab and, shade notwithstanding, the little elephant house didn't have AC. He could have designed that in, of course, but what was the point? Anybody could cobble together a bastard scenario full of anachronisms; artists had to maintain a certain kind of purity. Well, at least every now and then they did, just to show they still could.

How could this break-in have been done? It couldn't — at least not using any physics he knew.

It reminded him of the old story during the early days of aeronautics. Some engineers had done studies on bumblebees. Based on the surface area of the bee's wings, the weight and shape of the insect, and the amount of muscle and force it had available, they had determined, after much slide rule and pencil-on-paper activity, that it was flatly impossible for such a creature to fly.

Bzzzzt! Oops, there went another one.

It must have been terribly frustrating to look at a paper filled with precise mathematical calculations about flow and lift and drag, to know that bees couldn't fly, and then have to watch them flitting from flower to flower, oblivious to man's certainty that they simply couldn't do that.

The obvious deduction was that the researchers had missed something. They went back to their bamboo slide rules and pencil stubs, did more observations, filled dozens of legal pads, and eventually they figured out how the synergism of bee flight worked.

If you already have the answer, you damn sure ought to be able to at least figure out the question. Bees had been flying about their business for millions of years, despite what anybody thought otherwise, and that had to be factored in.

So here was a file that couldn't be brute-forced, and it had been broken open like an eggshell in the hands of a giant. What was it Sherlock Holmes had said? "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

This break-in couldn't be done by any method Jay Gridley knew about and, modesty aside, he was as good as anybody when it came to computer rascalry. But since it had been done, then there must be a new tiger out there in the tall grass. All he had to do was figure out what it looked like, find it, and capture it. Without getting eaten.

He grinned again. That brought up another bit of hunting wisdom. The recipe for rabbit stew?

First, you catch a rabbit.

Mikhayl Ruzhyo squinted into the desert sun. Although he was relatively fair-skinned, he had tanned since he'd moved here, and now he was the color of good holster leather, lines etched into his face, veins prominent on his bare arms. The days were not as hot here in Nevada as they would be in a couple of months, and the nights were still chilly, but it was warm enough out. He stood in front of the small Airstream trailer he had purchased and towed to the five-acre plot of sand and scrub weed he had also bought, feeling the hot wind play over him. He was more or less alone. Only one of the other five-acre "estates" within a mile had a structure on it, and that was a green plastic dome lined with what appeared to be aluminum foil, full of packets of freeze-dried food, like campers and hikers used. Ruzhyo had picked the simple padlock keeping the place shut and checked it out within a few hours of locating this property. Every couple of months, an old man who drove a large GMC pickup truck would arrive at the dome, unload more of the freeze-dried packets from the vehicle and store them in the building, then lock up and drive away. Ruzhyo wondered why the old man brought the stuff out. Was he storing it against some future catastrophe? Worried about a war? Or plague? Or was it part of some commercial venture?

It was hard to determine the motivations of Americans at times. Back home in Chetsnya, even in Russia, he had never seen old men hoarding this kind of food. Of course, maybe that was because nobody thought such things were worth hoarding. Or they couldn't get it if they did think that.

Ruzhyo shrugged mentally. No matter. The dome was the only building close, and the next structure past that was a cabin near the small river that was a dry bed most of the year, almost three miles away. The cabin belonged to a Methodist church, and it had been used by hardy campers but three times since Ruzhyo had lived here, never for more than two nights at a time. None of the campers had hiked close enough to speak to him.

He was grateful for the solitude. Since retiring from wetwork, he'd had few occasions to even talk to people, much less have to kill them. He had money banked he could retrieve as needed, using a computer card. Once a week or so, he drove almost two hours into town and bought his supplies in one of several large supermarkets where he was totally anonymous; he did not chat with the clerks when he checked out. He would fill the car's tank with gasoline and drive home. He would pass Death Valley on the west, and turn off the highway onto a dirt road that led to his trailer. The nearest town — if it could be called such — was Scotty's Junction. A military gunnery range dominated the land to the east.

Ruzhyo had paid cash for his car, a Dodge SUV, used but not too old, and had done the same for the trailer, both of which he had purchased through classified ads in a Las Vegas newspaper. The land he had acquired using one of the safe names he held and, to avoid arousing undue interest, had given a substantial down payment to the seller and paid monthly notes from the same account since, automatically deducted on the first of each month. His profile could hardly be much lower.

The trailer had a generator and batteries, even air-conditioning, but he used the cooler rarely. He relished the heat.

He could not say he was happy — he had not been happy since the cancer had claimed Anna, and he did not ever expect to be so again — but he could say he was content. His life was simple, his needs few. The biggest project on his agenda was building a natural stone wall along the perimeter of his property. It might take ten years, but that hardly mattered.

Or he had been content, until today. As he scanned the rock terrain, the dust and heat-hazed hills in the distance, he knew something was wrong.

There were no signs he could see to tell him what the problem was. No helicopters overflew him, no dust clouds betrayed vehicles trying a stealthy approach. He lifted the powerful binoculars and did a slow scan of the surrounding countryside. His five acres was on a rise, slightly higher than most of the area, and he had a good view. He could see the old man's dome from the front of the trailer. He looked at it now. Nothing.

He walked a few yards up the gentle incline behind the trailer, until he could see the roof of the Methodists' cabin and the dry riverbed. No activity there.

He lowered the binoculars. Nothing to be seen, no cause for concern, but in his gut he felt that something was wrong. He headed for the trailer. He had weapons in a flat box hidden under the floor in the bedroom. Perhaps it was time to take them out and keep them handy.

No. Not yet, he decided. There was nothing at which to shoot. Perhaps the feeling was wrong; perhaps his gut was merely troubled by a badly digested meal or a parasite.

He gave himself a tight smile. He had not survived as long as he had by entertaining such rationalizations. At his best, he had been like a roach seeing a sudden light in the night. Run first, worry later. It had kept him alive when many others in his profession had died. He had learned to trust it over the years. No, something was wrong. Whatever it was would manifest itself sooner or later. Then he would deal with it.

He went into the trailer.

Chapter 3

Colonel John Howard, the commanding officer in Net Force's military arm, had two surprises waiting for him at the airport when he exited one of the old, refitted business Lears they used for short hops in-country. The first surprise was that U.S. Army Tactical Satellite Operations — shortened to USAT, or sometimes informally called Big Squint — had definitely ID'd their target as the man Net Force sought.

This was not a major eyebrow-raiser, since Net Force already suspected this, or they wouldn't have asked USAT to route a bird to footprint the guy. It was, however, good to have it confirmed.

However, the second surprise was something of an unexpected shock: Howard was about to be promoted.

Military rank was a strange beast in Net Force. Officially, all of the officers and men under his command were "detached" National Guard, no matter what their prior branch of service. This was a name-only organization, a place for the paper-pushers and mouse-wavers to slot them, and unconnected to the Guard or U.S. Army in any real sense. It had to do with using military troops in civilian situations as much as anything, generally not allowed in domestic situations, but it also had to do with some strange tax law that came out in the new code's recent revisions. He didn't understand it, his boss didn't seem to understand it, and his accountant didn't understand it, but there it was.

Because of this, Net Force officer rank was more or less frozen. As CO, he could promote grunts, but only up to NCO. Howard knew he could have stayed in the regular army and, even in peacetime, eventually retired a grade or two up from where he was. Being an African-American helped that, there still being enough white liberal guilt floating around to slant things his way now and again. He never expected to get any higher than bird colonel when he retired and joined Net Force, even though the money — and, more importantly, the opportunities for action — were much better. His direct boss was a civilian, so when it came to brass, he was pretty much it.

Julio Fernandez, his top kick for as long as he'd been with Net Force and for a long time before that, delivered the news with obvious glee.

"Say again, Sergeant?" Howard said.

Fernandez stood in the hard shade of the gamp leading to the private hangar. He grinned. "Which part didn't the general understand, sir?"

"Let me rephrase that, and be succinct, it's already getting warm out here: What the hell are you talking about?"

The two of them walked toward the hangar.

Fernandez laughed. "Well, sir, the word is that the colonel will be, within thirty days from one April, offered the rank of Brigadier — that's a grade superior to colonel and inferior to major general, sir — in this bastard National Guard outfit he dragged me into."

"Held a gun to your head, did I?"

"If memory serves, sir."

Howard smiled. "Come on, Julio, what are you talking about? I haven't heard squat about any promotion, not a whisper." He tried to keep the excitement from his voice. Fernandez could be funny, but he wouldn't joke about something like this. Howard had always wanted to be a general, of course, but he'd given that hope up when he bailed from the RA.

"That's 'cause you ain't engaged to the most beautiful and bright woman in the western hemisphere — and probably the eastern hemisphere, too, John. A woman who can make a computer sing, dance, and do back flips without straining her pinkie. I saw the order myself, and it's as official as can be."

Despite his sudden rush of adrenaline, Howard said, "And Lieutenant Winthrop isn't supposed to be snooping in certain areas, now is she?"

Fernandez opened his hands, spread his fingers, and held them in an I-give-up gesture. "What can I do? I'm just a sergeant; she's my superior. What I know about computers you can put in your ear, with room left over for your finger. Besides, what's the point in being part of the world's best geek team if you can't poke around in the stuff wherever you want? It's real. Congratulations, John."

"Thanks, though I'll believe it when I see it." He felt his spirits soar. General Howard. Now there was a term.

Fernandez chuckled, reading his mind.

Howard recovered, tamped down his excitement and ego. "How is Joanna?"

"Pregnant as a crowded maternity ward. Not due until September, and I have to tell you, I don't think I'm gonna survive it. One minute I'm her angel and I can do no wrong, the next minute she takes my head off 'cause I'm breathing too loud. She eats catsup on mashed potatoes and sprinkles salt on her ice cream. She pees forty-nine times a day."

Howard laughed. "Serves you right. When are you going to make an honest woman out of her?"

"June first, so I have been told. She'd rather wait a year, it supposedly takes that long to set up a wedding, though that doesn't make any sense. Failing that, she wants to get married before the baby is born, and she doesn't want to look like a brood sow, so it's got to be by then. It's not up to me, I'm just the groom."

"Weddings and pregnancies are like that, Julio."

"I do get to pick the best man, though. You interested in the job?"

Howard nodded. "Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss watching the infamous Sergeant Julio Fernandez tie the knot for all the tea in India. Got a sex on the baby yet?"

"A boy." He grinned.

"Picked out a name yet?"

"Five of them: Julio Garcia Edmund Howard Fernandez."

Howard stopped walking and looked at his friend. "I'm honored."

"Not my idea, blame it on Joanna. Got a couple of grandfathers in there, too. Me, I'd have named him Bud and let it go at that. You get to be a godfather, too — another of her crazy ideas."

Howard smiled. He was going to be best man at his best friend's wedding, godfather to a boy wearing one of his names, and promoted to a general in the Net Force version of the army. You didn't get many days like this one.

"I hate to spoil the moment, but how about our fugitive?"

"No spoilers there, sir. He lives in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere, all by himself, doesn't even have a dog. Most ambitious thing he seems to do is building a rock wall along one edge of his property. He keeps a zero profile, doesn't socialize, doesn't talk to anybody, far as we can tell. Just piles up local rocks. Hard to believe this is an ex-Spetsnaz wetwork specialist with forty-four confirmed deletions to his credit."

"Well, if Vladimir Plekhanov can be believed — and the interrogation shrinks assure me that he can — the man who calls himself Mikhayl Ruzhyo is somebody whose skills are not limited to stacking rocks in the desert. We want to do this by the numbers, nice and clean, and gather him up gently enough so he's alive to answer some questions."

"No problem, piece of cake. Though I thought the Russians were our friends these days."

"I believe that is a facetious comment, Sergeant. You know as well as I do that the more we know about our friends, the better off we are."

"Amen."

"All right. Let's see what Big Squint has for us."

"Command post is in the coolest corner I could find, General."

"Let's wait on that promotion until I see it in writing, Sergeant." He grinned.

"Something funny, sir?"

"I was just picturing you as a lieutenant."

"You wouldn't!"

"If I was a general, they'd have to listen…"

The worried look on Fernandez's face was priceless.

Major Terrance Arthur Peel — Tap to his mates — stood next to Lord Goswell's greenhouse, behind the main house, watching as the beat-up black Volvo arrived. The groundskeeper's trio of dogs — a pair of border collies and an Alsatian — set to barking.

Peel liked dogs. He'd rather have one of those in a tent with him in the bush than the most sophisticated alarm made. A dog would let you know when you had company, and a well-trained dog could tell the difference between your friends and your enemies. And he would rip the enemy's throat out if you set him to it, too. Unlike people, good dogs were loyal.

The Volvo pulled to a halt, and the door squeaked open on the right side, disgorging a tall, spindly man of fifty, hair gone gray, with more ethnicity than perhaps his name would imply: Peter Bascomb-Coombs had a bit of the hooknose in him, Peel knew. He had done the background check himself.

Bascomb-Coombs wore an expensive, if ill-fitting, ice cream suit, a yellow silk shirt and blue tie, and handmade, pale gray Italian leather shoes. Certainly none of his ensemble was cheap. The shoes alone had to set him back three, four hundred quid. His lordship did not stint on what he paid his favored employees, and Bascomb-Coombs was favored, Jewish roots or not.

Not that the scientist's ethnic background mattered. It didn't affect the man's brain a whit, and whatever else he was, Bascomb-Coombs was as bright and shiny a penny as they came. Brilliant, a certified genius, so far ahead of the rest of his field that he was like an Einstein or a Hawking — in a class by himself — except that he couldn't keep track of a sodding social calendar. He was supposed to have been here for dinner last night, and he had simply gotten it wrong. And even if this had been the proper day, he was still half an hour late.

The stereotype of the absent-minded professor certainly had a basis in fact, if Bascomb-Coombs was the indicator. Goswell himself had shrugged off the slight. One had to suffer such things. What could one expect from the working class, geniuses or not? Goswell wasn't entirely foolish, save for his mania about the Empire, and he certainly had sense enough to know that Bascomb-Coombs was too valuable to toss away because he got a dinner date wrong.

Peel smiled and adjusted the black SIG 9mm in the Galco paddle holster on his right hip. He was a big enough man so the pistol was easily concealed under the white linen Saville Row sport coat he wore. Six-two, fourteen stone and a bit, and still in fighting shape. Naturally, his lordship wasn't the kind of man to have some thug in camouflage clothes standing about with a submachine gun, menacing guests. Peel, though retired from His Majesty's service under a cloud, was presentable. Good regiment, decent schools, still fit at forty-five, able to choose the right fork at formal dining if need be. An educated, civilized man, he could chat with the rich and famous and not seem out of place. He'd be a colonel by now, had it not been for that… unpleasant business in Northern Ireland on his final tour. Bloody country, bloody savages living in it.

The small com unit in his jacket pocket cheeped. That would be Hawkins, at the gate, confirming the arrival of the Volvo at the house, checking to be sure no terrorists had boiled from out of the car's boot to blast Peel.

"G-1 here. Package arrive?"

"Roger that, G-1. We are green at the house."

"Copy green. All clear here, as well."

Peel looked at his watch, a black-faced Special Forces analog with glow-in-the-dark tritium inserts, a gift from his men when he retired. None of them had been happy to see him go. The rest of the security team should be reporting in about… now….

"R-1. No activity here."

"R-2. Got a couple of the fat man's cows chewing cud over here, otherwise clear."

"Rover-3. Fence is clear from Grid 4 to Grid 7."

"Gate-2. Slow as bloody Christmas out here."

Peel acknowledged each of the gate guards and rovers as they called in their reports. He had ten men, all ex-army, spread out over the perimeter. This was not nearly enough for realistic coverage in a shooting situation, but most of his lordship's enemies weren't the kind of men who would try to storm The Yews to attack him. More likely they'd skewer him with sharp bonds or pointed hostile stock deals.

He grinned. Of course, his lordship had enemies who didn't know they were on his list, and now and again, they had to be… attended to, in a circumspect manner, of course. Which is how Tap Peel came to be in his lordship's service. It was because Peel's father and Lord Goswell had been classmates at Oxford, of course, and that the senior Peel had managed a knighthood of his own before he died. One kept these things in the family, or, failing that, among the chums.

Looked like rain to the north. Supposed to do that in London today. A little shower wouldn't hurt the vegetation hereabout, either, though the troops would bitch about it. Well, there was a soldier's lot, wasn't it? If you signed on, you signed on rain or shine, cold or hot, and that was that. God knew, he had stood in enough downpours, water running into his collar, cursing the officers who had posted him wherever he happened to be.

He smiled. It was a great life, being a solider. Too bad this was as close as he could come these days. Well, unless he wanted to traipse off to some third-world republic to be a hired mercenary. Hardly. In his grandfather's day, a soldier of fortune had been a more or less honorable profession, but now, a fool without any military service could answer an ad in an American magazine and wind up protecting your rear in some African jungle. Thank you, no. British fighting men were an odd lot, to be sure, but far and away a better class of soldier than one would find by advertising in a bloody magazine.

He supposed he should move inside now. Dinner would be started shortly, and there would be a round of drinks before. Bascomb-Coombs was a white-wine sort of fellow, and his lordship did not feel comfortable with men who did not drink, so Peel would go and have a sociable whiskey.

His lordship hated to drink alone.

So, a short one, two fingers, no more, to make sure his head stayed clear.

He grinned again. He had certainly had worse duty.

Chapter 4

The National Boomerang Qualifying Championships were being held at the new Clinton High School track and field ground, and Tyrone Howard was thrilled just to be there, not to mention how ecstatic he was to actually be entered as a contestant. Sure, it was Junior Novice Division, and he was only in one event, Maximum Time Aloft, but still, it was pretty amazing. He'd only been seriously throwing for, like, six months.

Next to Tyrone, his best friend, Jimmy Joe, blinked through thick glasses at all the contestants doing warm-ups. "Yo, slip, isn't this, like, dangerous? Happens if you get cracked on the stack with one of these things? This ain't VR, it's the real O'Neal."

Jimmy Joe was VR all the way, same as Tyrone had been just a few months ago, but Tyrone thought maybe he was coming along okay on this… outside stuff. Even though it had taken him a week to convince his friend to leave the computer and go to an actual competition. He said, "So you get knocked over and wake up with a bump on your skull. Hey, you could short out a REM driver and get brain-fry, too, hillbilly."

"Oh, yeah, right, I could. Past a triple fail-safe and with like a half milliamp of vamp? Couldn't fry a pissant's egg with that. Not the same as getting whopped on the head with a big ole stick, slip." Jimmy Joe shook his head. He gleamed in the sunshine. He had to wear skinblock to walk to the bus in the mornings, and it took him two weeks in the sun just to darken from bright to white. Something of a contrast to Tyrone, who was a nice chocolate color even if he stayed inside all the time. Which he hadn't been doing much of late. He'd been a hardwired compuzoid, sure enough, and good at it, too, until that whole business with Bella blew him out of VR and into RW. Being jettisoned by her had done a doody on him, sure enough. His thirteenth year had been hard, that was a facto, Jacko.

"All right, you got me there," Jimmy Joe said when Tyrone didn't reply. "Frame the game, slip. What's all this twirly stick-dick about?"

Tyrone grinned. "Okay, there are two basic kinds of boomerangs. One is a stick that comes back when you throw it. It might do a lot of fancy stuff on the way out and back, or not, depending on the type. They can range from the basic model that looks like a cross-section of a banana up to helicopter-like things with six or eight blades.

"The second kind is based on the abo war sticks, and it doesn't come back, it just keeps on going until it drops — or it hits somebody in the head. A war boomerang can go farther than anything else as heavy that you can throw. They fly due to gyroscopic precession caused by asymmetric lift. The lift comes from rotation combined with linear motion."

"Code interrupt that last transmission, slip! Put it in my native tongue."

"It flies because it turns into a wing as it spins; it comes back because the wing angle is different in different places."

A red and black German shepherd ran past, chasing a hard-silicone Frisbee Jackarang.

Tyrone shrugged out of his backpack, pulled out his basic Wedderburn. "See how the edge is slanted on this blade, on the inner aspect? But on this side, the trailing edge has the slant. When it spins into the wind, the push is different every time the thing rotates, so it starts to curve. You throw it right-handed, like this—" Tyrone showed him the grip, with the concave side forward and the end up " — and it flattens out and curves to the left."

Jimmy Joe looked at the boomerang. Hefted it. "Hmm. I could code a pro, put in the factors — weight, RPM, speed, aerodynamics, all like that — and make it work exactly the same in VR."

"Welcome to the past, slip. Serious throwers all have their own scenarios, since B.C. days. I've got exacts for each of my birds. But the program is just the map—these are the territory." He opened his backpack to show his friend his other boomerangs. He had three classics and three MTAs, ultrathin and light, rosin-impregnated linen L-shaped blades designed for maximum flight time. His favorite of these was the Moller "Indian Ocean" model, a standard Paxolin model he had gotten pretty good with.

He indicated the Moller. "I'll use this one for my event."

"Hmmp. Doesn't sound as hard as DinoWarz."

"Analog real time is different than digital, hillbilly. Talkin' muscle memory, judging wind speed, temperature, all like that."

Jimmy Joe wasn't impressed. "I could program all that in. One session."

"Yeah, but you couldn't walk over there and throw this and make it work."

The dog ran back with the Frisbee in its mouth and dropped it at the feet of its owner, a tall dude with green hair. "Good girl, Cady!" Green-Hair said. "Go again?"

The dog barked and bounced around.

"And the event you are doing is which one?"

"Maximum Time Aloft. You throw, it twirls up and around, a judge puts a stopwatch on it. Everybody gets a throw, the bird that stays up the longest wins. You have to catch it when it comes back or it doesn't count, and it has to land inside the fifty-meter circle. You want something light and with a lot of lift. The current record is just over four minutes."

"Feek that! Four minutes twirling around? No motor? Come on."

"That's just the official record. There are guys who have put one in the air for almost eighteen minutes, unofficially."

"No feek? That doesn't seem possible."

"I scat you not."

Tyrone held up the Moller. "My best with this is just over two minutes. If I could throw that today, I could probably make the Junior National Team."

"That'd be DFF."

Tyrone smiled. Yep, data flowin' fine. Too bad his dad wasn't here to watch. Dad had been real helpful when Tyrone had gotten started, even had an old boomerang at Grandma's house he'd found. Of course, Dad couldn't keep up with him now, but that was okay. He was not bad — as dads went.

The PA system blared to life. Tyrone's event was up.

Tyrone swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. Practice was one thing; competition was another. This was his first, and he suddenly felt a need to go pee, real bad, even though he had gone just ten minutes ago.

Despite his indoor pallor, Jimmy Joe seemed to be getting into the spirit of things. "So, when do you do your thing?"

"I'm eighteenth. There are thirty-some-odd throwers in my class. Some of them have come all the way across the country for this, and some of them are real good."

"You gonna watch the others?"

"Oh, yeah. Might see something useful. Plus I want to know what time I have to beat."

"You know some rude dude has, like, three minutes, that helps you?"

"Just like knowing the high score in DinoWarz does."

"Copy that."

There were several other events under way at the same time — distance, accuracy, Australian — and Tyrone and Jimmy Joe found a shady spot under a dealer's canopy and watched the juniors.

First guy up was a tall, lean kid with a shaved head. He threw a bright red tri-blade — not the best choice for this event — and Tyrone clicked his stopwatch. Forty-two seconds. Nothing.

The next guy was a short, stout kid with a Day-Glogreen L-shape, which looked like a Bailey MTA Classic or maybe a Girvin Hang 'Em High. Or it could be one of the clones; you couldn't really tell from this far away.

Tyrone clocked the flight at a minute-twelve. No winner here, he was pretty sure. Winds were light, from the northeast, so he wouldn't need to tape coins or flaps to his blades to keep them from getting batted down.

Third thrower up was a girl, as dark as Tyrone was, probably about his age, and she had a Moller, same model as his. She took a couple of steps, leaned into it, and threw.

The bird sailed out and up, high, hung there for what seemed like forever, spinning, drifting, circling back. It was a beautiful throw and an exemplary flight. Tyrone glanced away from the bird at the girl. She was looking back and forth from her stopwatch to the bird, and she was grinning.

As well she should. When the bird finished its lazy trip and came down, the black girl had a two-minute-and-forty-eight-second flight to her credit. That wasn't going to be an easy time to beat.

They watched eight more throwers, none of whom came within thirty seconds of the third girl, then Tyrone had to go and warm up for his own throw. His mouth was a desert, his bowels churned, and he was breathing too fast. This ought not to be scary, it was something he did every day the weather was good, throw his boomerang, dozens of times. But there weren't several hundred people watching him practice, and today he only got one throw that counted.

Just let me break two minutes, he thought, as he approached the throwing circle. Two minutes won't win, but I won't be last, and I won't feel like a fool. Two minutes, okay?

He pulled a little commercial pixie dust from his pocket and rubbed it between his left thumb and first two fingers, letting it fall to check the wind direction. The glittery dust sparkled as it fell and showed him that the wind had shifted a hair toward the north but still was mostly northeast. He dropped the rest of the dust, pulled his stopwatch and held it in his left hand, and took a good grip on the Moller with his right. He took three deep breaths, exhaling slowly, then nodded at the judge next to the ring. If he stepped out, he'd be disqualified. The judge nodded back, raised his own stopwatch.

Go, Tyrone.

He took another deep breath, one step, leaned, snapped his wrist, and put as much shoulder into it as he thought the bird could stand. He was careful to make sure it didn't lay over to the right, and he put it as close to forty-five degrees as he could.

He clicked the stopwatch.

Two minutes and forty-one seconds later, his bird gave it up. He caught it safe, double-handed clap, and that was that.

Tyrone grinned. There were still a dozen more throwers to go, but he had beaten his own personal record by more than thirty seconds, and he was in second place. No matter what happened, he was happy with that throw.

As Tyrone started back toward where Jimmy Joe waited, the black girl who was in first came over. She was athletic looking, muscular in a T-shirt and bike shorts and soccer shoes, a little plain. Not in the drop-dead-beautiful class that Bella had been in. And still was in.

"Nice throw," she said. "You'da leaned a little more to your left, you'da gotten another ten, twelve seconds out of the flight and beat me."

"You think?"

"Sure. The Moller'll do six minutes, so they say. I've thrown a three minute fifty-one second in practice. Hi, I'm Nadine Harris."

"Tyrone Howard."

"Where you from, Ty?"

"Here. Washington."

"Hey, really? Me, too. Just moved here from Boston. I go to Eisenhower Middle. Or I will go next week."

Tyrone stared at her. "No feek?"

"Nope. You heard of it?"

"I go there."

"Wow! What are the chances of that? Hey, maybe we can throw together sometime! Last school I was at, nobody else was a player."

"I hear that. Exemplary. Let me give you my e-mail address."

When Tyrone got back to where Jimmy Joe stood, his friend was looking around on the ground. "Lose something, white boy?"

"Oh, I was just looking for a big stick."

"A big stick?"

"Yeah, slip, for you. To help keep the women away." He waved in the direction of the departing black girl, pretending to be hitting at her with an imaginary stick.

"Ah, shut it down, dip, she's just a player is all!"

"I can see that."

"You spend too much time in the pervo rooms, JJ. Get a life."

"Why should I? Yours is so much more fun."

Tyrone swatted at him, but his friend danced away. He moved pretty fast for such a little creep.

Later, when the juniors were done, Tyrone watched the portable computer sign they'd set up to flash the results. Unofficially, he already knew he was third. Some guy from Puerto Rico had slipped in between him and Nadine with a time three lousy seconds longer than Tyrone's. Even so, third out of thirty-four at a national competition, and with a new PR, that wasn't bad. He'd made the U.S. team.

The sign started to blink, then it went blank. A second later, an image of some kind of flag appeared, waving in a VR breeze.

Tyrone glanced at his friend. "Hacker got 'em. Why don't you go and offer to fix it?"

Jimmy Joe's eyes lit up. "You think?"

Tyrone laughed.

"Got a problem, Colonel," Fernandez said.

They were at the staging area, getting the trucks loaded for the drive into the desert. A dozen troops, men and women, hauled gear and made ready to begin the run.

"We haven't even made first contact with the enemy yet, Sergeant. Not the local police, is it?"

Sometimes they called the locals in, sometimes not, depending on the situation. This time, there weren't any cops close enough to the target's location to worry about, and the Clark County Sheriff's Department didn't need to know because it was out of their jurisdiction by a long way.

Fernandez shrugged. "It's the computer. Take a look."

Howard drifted over to the tac-comp, where a tech named Jeter sat and cursed under his breath.

"It appears to be the Union Jack," Howard observed.

"Yes, sir," Jeter said. "It is. It's supposed to be the sitrep feed from Big Squint, with a three-dee layout of the target's location." Jeter thumped the monitor with one hand. "This is what happens when you buy your electronics wholesale from the damned New Zealanders, begging your pardon, sir."

Howard grinned. "I trust you to clear it up before we depart."

"Yes, sir."

Howard looked away, took a deep breath and let it out. He looked at his watch. He wondered how Tyrone had done at the boomerang competition. He was tempted to call, but he knew better. Shielded com or not, it was unwise to give away your position in a tactical situation and not a good habit to get into. He'd call his son when they got this target acquired and neutralized. He was a good kid, Tyrone, but he was also a teenager. Life was getting complicated for the boy, and it wasn't going to get any easier. How could a father protect his son from that? He couldn't, and that was painful. The days when Daddy was all-knowing and all-wise were gone. He'd never given it much thought, but now it was staring him in the face: His son was growing up, changing, and if he wanted to maintain contact with him, he was going to have to change, too. That was a strange feeling.

"Got it," Jeter said. "We're back on track."

Worry about child rearing later, John. Keep your mind on the business at hand.

"Good. Carry on."

Chapter 5

Toni Fiorella climbed the narrow, creaky stairs toward the second floor of the four-story walk-up. The place she wanted was on that floor, over a small appliance shop in an area called Clapham, between a brick-red Indian tandoori restaurant and a charity shop with boarded-up plywood windows. The buildings and the area in general were run-down. Not as bad as the worst of the Bronx, maybe, but not a place you'd want to take your old granny for a stroll after dark. Unless your granny was maybe a dope dealer and armed.

As she neared the top, Toni caught the odor of sweat, stale and fresh.

The heavy wooden door was unlocked.

Inside were fifteen or sixteen men and five women, all dressed in dark sweatpants, athletic shoes, and white T-shirts. The T-shirts had a black and white logo on the back, with a smaller matching version over the left breast: A Javanese wavy-bladed dagger — a kris—set at about a thirty-degree horizontal angle, bounded on the top and bottom by the words Pentjak Silat.

The twenty-odd people were doing djurus.

Toni grinned. The forms weren't the same as hers, since this version of the Indonesian martial art was not Serak but a variation of Tjikalong, which was a western Javanese style, but it looked similar enough to hers that there was no mistaking the djurus—the forms — for karate kata.

The school itself was hardly impressive, nothing as nice as the FBI gyms at home. The ceiling was high, maybe fifteen feet. The floor was dark wood, old and worn but clean. Folded in one corner of the large room were fraying blue hardfoam mats that also showed much wear, plus a couple of heavy punching bags wrapped in layers of duct tape. A brown wooden door had upon it a sign that indicated it led to a bathroom — a loo, it was called over here. Exposed pipes, for water or heat or whatever, ran across the wall in back about ten feet up, and the metal had been painted alternating colors, red, white, and blue. A large roof support in the middle of the floor wore what looked like an old mattress wrapped around it and held tight with half a dozen red and blue bungee cords. A double row of fluorescent lights graced the ceiling. An exhaust fan whirred in one of the windows, blowing the odor of sweat into the evening.

It was your basic large workout room, no frills.

A tall man dressed the same as the students walked around, observing their form, correcting stances, and offering praise when it was merited. He was not quite muscular enough to be a bodybuilder, but he was broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped. He had short gray hair with some brown left in it. He wore aviator-style glasses. A first look might say mid-thirties, but Toni guessed he was in his early fifties, based on his hands and the smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

"Hello," he said in a clipped British tone. "May I help you?"

"Hello. I'm Toni Fiorella. I called earlier?"

"Ah, yes, the American visitor. Welcome! I'm Carl Stewart, and these are my students." He waved at the assembly. "We're just about to finish with djurus."

"Don't let me get in the way. I'll just stand and watch, if that's all right?"

"Yes, of course."

"Thank you, Guru." Toni moved to stand next to the stack of mats.

"All right, then," Stewart said to the class. "Any questions about the djurus?"

A few hands went up. Stewart answered the queries about various moves from the forms. He was patient, not condescending, and he would demonstrate the correct move to show how it was done.

He was smooth, balanced, tight. In silat, the ability to perform a djuru precisely wasn't always an indication of fighting ability, but you could tell a lot about a person by watching them move.

Carl Stewart moved as well as anybody Toni had ever seen. And she had seen more than a few fighters over the years.

Interesting.

For the next half hour or so, Stewart worked on self-defense applications from the forms, showing how they would apply against an attacker, then putting the students into pairs to practice. There weren't any belts to denote rank, same as in most silat styles, but it was obvious after a few minutes who were the advanced students and who were the beginners.

This was her weakness, Toni knew. She'd had plenty of advanced training from her guru — as the Indonesians called their teachers — but she hadn't spent much time in group situations, either as a student or an instructor. Guru had always told her she needed to teach to get the full benefit of silat. She had only just begun that.

After about thirty minutes, Stewart put the advanced students into a series of controlled semi-free style match-ups. One student would be the attacker, the other the defender. He allowed the attackers to throw full power punches and kicks, but only to the chest or thigh, where a missed block would merely be painful instead of seriously damaging.

She watched as the current pair of students faced each other. The defender was a thin man with long black hair, the attacker a short and squat red-haired fellow. The thin man turned so his right side was toward the attacker, his feet wide in a deep, open stance; his left hand was high, by his face, the other hand low, to cover his groin.

Red tapped his right fist, to show that would be his attacking weapon. They stood about six feet apart, and they circled each other slowly.

Red lunged, shot a fist at the center of Thin's chest. Thin pivoted slightly, did a scoop block and a backfist with his right hand, then followed up with a grab and sapu, a sweep, that upended Red and put him on the floor.

Not bad.

Red came up, gave Thin a fist-in-the-palm salute, and they reversed roles.

Thin punched. Red ducked under the punch, put his right shoulder into Thin's belly, stepped through and biset, a heel-drag, and took Thin to the floor.

Not bad at all. These would be the two senior students, Toni guessed.

Stewart waved the students off. Then he looked at Toni. "We have an American silat practitioner with us today, class. Perhaps she'd like to demonstrate how her style works?"

Toni smiled. She'd half expected this. Since she was in jeans and running shoes and a short-sleeved cotton pullover, she was dressed to move. "Sure," she said.

"Joseph, if you would?" Stewart nodded at Red. "Joseph is my senior student."

Toni nodded and gave Stewart, then Red, the fist-in-palm bow. Relaxed, hands low.

Red circled to her left. She did a back cross-step, turned to follow him.

Red lunged, bracing his right punch with his left hand, set up for the wipe if she blocked.

Toni dropped to the floor, caught Red in the belly with a short left-thrust kick, hooked her right foot behind his right knee, and thrust with her left again.

Red went over backward as Toni rolled up and did a heel scoop — a hackey-sack kick over his head, slapping it with her left hand to show the connection.

Red waited to see if she was done and, when she stepped back to show she was, came up with a big grin. "Nice move!"

Stewart also wore a smile. Her move had been flashy, but it had worked against his senior student, so he ought to be impressed.

"Very good, Ms. Fiorella."

"Toni, please, Guru."

"Mightn't I ask if you would feel up to performing kembangan?"

Toni nodded. Of course. Kembangan was the "flower dance" and, unlike forms or kata in most martial arts, was a spontaneous expression of a silat player's art, nothing prearranged. An expert never did the same form twice. Unlike buah, the full-speed and full-power dance, kembangan softened the moves, using the open hands more than fists, and turned the motions into a dance suitable for demonstrations, weddings, and social gatherings.

If you really wanted to see how good a silat player was, you watched them do kembangan. In the old days, when a fight was imminent but the contestants didn't want to maim or kill each other, they would sometimes offer each other kembangan instead of actual combat. Experts could recognize who would have won the fight by the skill they displayed during the dance, and there would be no need to come to blows. If you were defeated in kembangan, you apologized or made right whatever the problem was, and that was that. It would be dishonorable to continue against an opponent of much lesser skill, and foolish to challenge one who was obviously much better. Of course, the best dancers would sometimes deliberately put small errors into their routines to lull an opponent into thinking they were less skillful than they actually were. In kembangan competitions, only if the players considered each other to be of like abilities did the game progress to sweeps or strikes.

Toni took a deep breath, allowed it to escape softly. She made a full, formal bow to the guru, did another cleansing breath, then a third, and began.

There were days when you were off and days when you were on. Today, her flow was good, she felt the energy coursing through her, and she knew she could do a clean dance without major mistakes. Halfway through, she deliberately misstepped a hair, allowed her balance to drift slightly off before she recovered.

One did not wish to embarrass the guru in charge of a school one visited by being perfect. It might make him look bad in front of his students, and that was impolite.

A minute was enough. She finished the dance, bowed again. It was a great one, she knew, one of her best. Her guru would be proud.

The class broke into spontaneous applause.

Toni flushed, embarrassed.

Stewart smiled at her. "Beautiful. An outstanding kembangan. Thank you… Guru."

Toni gave him a short nod. He acknowledged her skill by calling her "teacher." And now she was curious. It was a bit forward, but she said, "I would be pleased to enjoy your kembangan, Guru."

The students went quiet. It wasn't a direct challenge, but there was a broad hint: I showed you mine, now show me yours.

He smiled wider. "Of course."

He offered her a formal bow, different than hers but similar in intent, cleared his wind and mind, and began. Stewart's best days would be behind him. At fifty, she knew he would be past his physical peak, on the downhill slide. That was the nature of human physiology. His knowledge might be greater, but his body would be half a step behind, and steadily, if slowly, losing ground. Her own guru had been amazing, but she'd been an old woman when Toni started, and there were places she could no longer go. Stewart was still in good shape to look at, and certainly better shape than most men his age, but he would have lost a couple of steps by now. She should have made a couple more mistakes in her dance, she thought.

With Stewart's first series of moves, Toni realized she was wrong.

If you play decent guitar and you see a tape of Segovia practicing, it makes you want to cry because you know you'll never be that good.

Stewart was the martial artist equivalent of Segovia.

Toni watched, mesmerized. The man moved as if he had no bones, as if he was a drop of hot oil rolling down a clean glass window — smooth, effortless, and utterly amazing. She had never seen anybody perform kembangan as well.

At about the same point in his dance as Toni had done, Stewart offered a bobble. His foot came down a hair crooked, he had to shift his weight hurriedly to recover.

Toni didn't buy it for a second. This man, who was old enough to be her father, would not make that kind of mistake. He'd given it to her, a gift, so she would not lose face.

She was thrilled. If push came to shove, Stewart was superior to her. He was the perfect opponent, the one her guru had always trained her to face: bigger, stronger, probably faster, and with technique that exceeded her own. In silat, you didn't practice to beat attackers who had no skill, you strived to learn how to defeat those who were as good as or better than you. If you could prevail in those circumstances, you had the essence of the Indonesian system.

If she and Stewart fought, he would win. There was no question in her mind.

As soon as she realized this, Toni wanted to do it, wanted to test him, to be bested — and to learn from it.

Stewart finished the dance and bowed. The students wanted to go wild with cheering and clapping, but he held up a hand to silence them. He gave Toni a military bow, a slow nod.

Toni said, "I'm going to be here for a week or so longer. I would be honored if you would allow me to attend your classes, Guru."

"The honor," he said, "would be mine."

Oh, boy!

Jay Gridley used a big silver machete to hack his way through leafy vines that draped low across the jungle trail. It was hard work, chopping at the bush, and the heat and humidity enveloped him in a miasmatic fog that kept him drenched in sweat. The wooden handle raised blisters on his hand, and the stink of cut branches and vines was so cloyingly… verdant, it was alive with greenness.

It wasn't comfortable, this hack through the jungle, but there was no good way to make this tracking scenario a cake walk. No matter what he created, it wasn't going to make the job easier. If he made a haystack, the needle he'd be looking for would be microscopic; if he created a beach, he'd be trying to find a sand-colored smudge on a particular grain of sand. It was hard, period, end of mission statement, we don't need to see his ID, move along.

But he was getting closer, nonetheless.

A fat albino python sunned itself on a big branch to his left, well off the trail, no danger. Gridley grinned. It was the dog that didn't bark in the night that had pointed him in the right direction. The player who had broken the encrypted code in Pakistan was better than anybody Gridley had ever gone up against, no question. Better than the redneck from Georgia, better than the mad Russian, and — as much as he hated to admit it to himself — better than he was. This guy was a master, he'd have to be to do what he did, and he had not left a trail.

Well, not exactly. The tiger had left an also — a trail of omission, "TOO," thus brought to "also" — a concept that was impossible to convey to anybody who didn't know the VR field in and out, and exceedingly difficult to understand if you did know. It was a lot like trying to make sense of subatomic physics; it was counterintuitive. The tiger who had eaten the goat went this way because there was no trail and… because nobody could have gone this way.

Gridley hacked at a branch with heart-shaped dark leaves as big as dinner plates. The branch fell. The weight of the double rifle slung over his shoulder was oppressive, the belt with the holstered Webley revolver dug into his side. There was no trail here, but he was sure the tiger had gone this way. He cut another branch, tossed it aside—

He was right. It had gone this way.

He got only a glimpse of it as it leaped. A flash of orange and black, huge teeth, a paw as big as a dragon's.

Then the tiger slapped Jay Gridley's head with that monstrous paw and the world went red — and away.

Chapter 6

Alex Michaels came out of a troubled dream to the sound of his virgil playing the Aaron Copland fanfare. He sat up and glared at the device where it sat next to his bed in the recharger. What was cute in the afternoon wasn't so funny at two in the morning, even when it woke you from a nightmare about your ex-wife.

Next to him, Toni stirred.

Michaels got up, grabbed the virgil and killed the call tone, then headed for the bathroom. Once there, he turned on the light, shut the door, and activated the phone circuit. After glancing at himself in the mirror, he left the visual mode off. Naked, with a sleep-wrinkled face and pillow-hair, wasn't his best look.

The call was from Allison's office.

"This is Alex Michaels."

"Hold for the director, please."

Yeah, right. Wake him up in the middle of the night, but couldn't be bothered to make the call herself?

She came on almost immediately.

"Michaels, we have a situation here. One of your men, a… Jason Gridley?… has had some kind of stroke. He is in the hospital."

"What?"

"He was found when the shift changed at the controls of his computer."

"A stroke? But — how? He's a kid! There's no history of stroke in his family."

"You'll have to ask the doctors about that." There was a pause. "I understand that Gridley is your point man on virtual reality scenarios."

"Yes." Jesus, a stroke? Jay? He couldn't get his mind around that. Jay was in his twenties.

"Could this have had anything to do with the investigation we are conducting into the situation in Pakistan?"

What was she talking about? "No, no way. You can't get hurt by a computer in VR mode, even with the power jacket at maximum, there's not enough juice. Why would you even ask?"

"Because a British Intelligence computer operative and one in Japan have also had cerebellar events similar to Gridley's, both of them in the last few hours."

"Not possible. I mean, it's not possible that they were caused by their computers."

"Nonetheless, Commander, it seems a striking coincidence that these events happened. And I am given to understand, unofficially, that these two computer operatives were also investigating the Pakistani situation."

"Jesus."

"Perhaps you might want to cut your vacation short."

"I — yes, you're right. I'll book a flight out as soon as I can get one."

"Good. Keep me informed."

Michaels stared at his reflection in the mirror. Never a dull moment.

"Alex?"

He opened the door. Toni, fogged with sleep and beautifully nude, stood outside the bathroom. "Who are you talking to?"

"The boss."

Then he gave her the bad news about Jay.

"Son of a bitch!"

"Should I take that personally, Sergeant?"

Howard smiled at Fernandez, but the expression was tight and forced. He could well understand his friend's frustration; he was pissed off, too.

The tactical computer was down. It had flickered back to normal operation from the British flag a couple of times but then had lost the satellite signal and had been unable to regain it. The techs had fiddled with things, and it turned out not to be their system, but USAT's. Howard had talked to the OOD there, but it wasn't going to help. Major Phillips was polite but terse: His system was acting up, and begging the colonel's pardon, but he had his hands full trying to unsnarl the bastard and could he have somebody call him back ASAP?

That had been hours ago, and still the feed wasn't accessible.

Howard looked at his watch, then at Fernandez. "Okay, that's it. We're scrubbed. Tell them to stand down."

As he expected, his top kick wasn't happy with that. "Colonel, we don't need the feed from Big Squint. This guy is in the middle of the desert. We can eyeball it."

"Negative, Sergeant, that's not the protocol."

"Sir, troops have been taking territory without satellite coverage for thousands of years. It's one guy alone in a trailer. We got two squads and enough gear to fill up a boxcar! How hard can it be?"

"Come on, Julio, you know the rules. There's no leeway for emergency bypass here. Like you said, it's one guy. He's been there for months, he doesn't know we're here, and we've got the roads in and out covered. He's not going anywhere, and even if he wanted to, he couldn't. This is as by-the-numbers as it gets."

Fernandez mumbled something.

"Say again, Sergeant?"

"Sir, this is bullshit. If twenty troops can't take down one man without help from big bird, we ought to turn in our uniforms and retire. Go sit on the bank of a catfish pond, drown worms, and wait to die. Sir."

Howard's grin this time was real. "I hear you, Julio, but it's our protocol for this op-sit. The RA guys will fix their system sooner or later. Tell the troops to take the night off. Go see the casinos, watch a show, enjoy the lights of Vegas. Be back here at oh six hundred, and we'll reset."

Fernandez shrugged. Unexpected liberty was always good, and this was, after all, Las Vegas. A man with a little money in his pocket could get into all kinds of trouble without having to work too hard. "Well, sir, since you put it like that, I suppose we'll just have to suffer through the wait."

"And remember, you are practically a married man now, Sergeant."

"Yes, sir, of course. But I'm not a dead practically married man. I can still look."

The two grinned at each other.

Howard headed toward the nearby motel where Net Force had booked enough rooms for his troops. It still felt weird to be bivouacked not in a tent under the stars but at an air-conditioned motel. It made more sense, of course. A military group camping anywhere around here would draw more attention than it would with its vehicles garaged and its troops tucked away out of sight.

He planned to call home and talk to his wife and son, grab a shower to wash some of the heat and dust off, and maybe find a nice restaurant for some dinner. They had good food in Las Vegas, especially at some of the casinos, and it was cheap, too. They figured they were going to get your money at the slots or the tables, so they might as well make it attractive to stay there and eat, to give them more chances at it. And you could play keno right at your table while you chowed down. Most places served breakfast, lunch, or dinner twenty-four hours a day. Once you stepped into the wonders of Gambling Land, time stood still. They didn't leave a lot of clocks around to remind you that you needed to be getting along home, either.

It had been a few years since he'd been here, but Howard didn't think it would have changed all that much. You could stick the kiddies in free day care or turn them loose in Warner Bros. World or the Hard Rock, and go lose their college education money. Fun for the whole family and a long way from the old days when the mob ran everything.

The motel was low key and also cheap, Net Force being like most other government agencies that way. GS employees didn't need to be staying at the best hotels on the taxpayer's credit card. It didn't look good, especially at election time.

There was an old-fashioned mechanical slot machine next to the Coke machine, and Howard shook his head at that. He wasn't a gambler. Oh, he'd buy a lottery ticket now and then or put a fiver on a soccer or baseball pool. He would root for the Orioles, maybe even cover a friendly bet on them, but he wasn't infested with gambling fever. The odds always favored the house, and the only way to look at games of chance as far as he was concerned was to consider them entertainment. You wanted to play in the casinos, you took a few dollars and spent them, just as if you were paying for dinner and a show. Once they were gone, that was it, you quit, end of story. You didn't dig into your pocket to win back what you'd lost, and if you happened to come out ahead by the time you were supposed to leave, you went home and put the money in the bank.

His father had taught him that. If you play somebody else's game, most of the time they are going to win. Better to spend your money where it will do you some good.

Howard's room was small, clean, and the water pressure in the shower was not as bad as he'd expected. After he cleaned up, he unpacked his duffel, slipped into a pair of no-iron khaki slacks and a short-sleeve shirt, and found some clean socks and his old loafers. Always paid to take civilian clothes if you were working anywhere near a town. One minute you were a soldier, the next you were a civilian. With the variation in hairstyles these days, nobody could tell by looking.

So, call home, visit with the family, then grab a bite to eat. And after that? Maybe come back to the room and read. After all, he had to get up early, and while the rare bacterial infection he'd had a while back that made him feel old and tired had been cleared up, the days when he could party all night long and then go straight to work without missing a beat were long past. If he was going to be up and ready to roll at 0600, he was going to have to get to bed at a decent hour.

He grinned at himself in the mirror. Maybe Fernandez was right; maybe he should retire and go drown worms in a catfish pond.

Nah. Not yet.

When Jay Gridley awoke, he had a moment of panic: Where was he?

There was an IV going into his left hand, a tube running from his penis into a bag attached to the side of the bed, and wireless pickups stuck to his chest and his head. There was a cuff around his left upper arm. He wore one of those shortie open-backed gowns.

A hospital, okay, he got that. And something must have happened to him for him to be here. An accident?

He couldn't remember. He started to look at his arms and legs more carefully, to see if anything was missing or damaged. No, they were there, and he wasn't feeling any pain—

A tall, short-haired brunette in green scrubs appeared next to the bed. She took Jay's right wrist in her hand and looked at her watch. She was about thirty, very attractive. She smiled at him. "Hey," she said.

He couldn't feel her fingers on his wrist. In fact, he couldn't feel his right arm at all. Couldn't even relate to it. As if that arm she was holding belonged to somebody else. What—?

She said, "You're in the Neuro Ward at the base hospital. You had a CVA, a cerebrovascular accident. A stroke. My name is Rowena. I'm the floor nurse this shift. Do you understand?"

A stroke? How could that be? He said, "I understand." But what came out of his mouth instead was a horrible, slurred, slack-lipped sound: "Awo unnersan."

His incipient panic expanded into full-blown terror.

The nurse put her hand on his chest, on the left side. He felt that. "Easy. Your doctor is on the way, she'll explain it all to you, but listen, don't worry. You've got some transient paralysis on the right side. It's going to go away. What happened to you was not major. The drugs you are on are going to fix the damage. It'll take a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, okay? But you are going to be all right."

Gridley felt his panic abate a little. He was going to be all right. He clutched at that, trying to get a tighter grip on it. He was going to be all right.

Unless she is just telling you that so you don't lose it, his inner voice said.

Another woman entered the room, a short, heavyset bleached blonde. She also wore green scrubs, and she carried a flatscreen. Without preamble, she said, "I'm Dr. West. Some time yesterday afternoon you had a small CVA — a stroke. There were no clots or major bleeders apparent on the CAT and MEG brain scans, and the cause is idiopathic — that means we don't know what caused it. Your vital signs are normal, your blood pressure, respiration, and pulse are all fine, and your blood chemistry is within normal limits. Aside from the CVA, everything is great. You have what we think is a transient hemiplegia or hemiparesis, and we expect full resolution of that. You following me?"

Gridley nodded, not wanting to hear his own voice.

"Good. You'll be here for a day or two, then we'll let you go home. Physical therapy starts this afternoon. Somebody will come in and show you some exercises."

The doctor glanced at her watch. "Got to run. I'll check in on you later, with a bunch of medical students. People will come and go, draw blood, give you meds. Try to get some rest."

Dr. West handed the flatscreen to Rowena and left.

Get some rest?

Yeah, right. Part of his brain had exploded and he was supposed to rest? No way. Not gonna happen. He didn't want to just lie there and worry about it, either, but what choice did he have? He was tubed and wired, and he wasn't going anywhere.

Lord. How could this have happened?

Chapter 7

Applewhite brought Goswell's tray and set it on the table. Vapor rose from the teapot's spout — it was a bit cool out here in the garden, but crisp and bracing. Goswell nodded. "Thank you, Applewhite."

The butler poured a cup of tea, adding one lump of sugar and a squeeze of lemon. "More scones, sir?"

"I think not. A telephone, if you would."

"Certainly, milord."

Applewhite produced a mobile from his jacket pocket before Goswell could even take a sip of the tea. He shook his head. Technology. A mixed blessing, to be sure, but fortunately, one that had served him well, financially and otherwise.

"And what was our scientist fellow's name again?"

"Peter Bascomb-Coombs, milord."

"Ah, yes, of course." Goswell repeated the man's name into the phone, then held it to his ear. It rang thrice.

"Yes, what is it?" He sounded irritated. Well, of course, these kinds of fellows always did.

"Geoffrey Goswell here."

"Oh. Lord Goswell." That changed his tone quick enough, eh what? "What may I do for you?"

"Not much, my boy. I was ringing you up to see about that, ah… small matter we discussed recently over supper."

"Ah, yes, well, it is proceeding apace, my lord. There have been a couple of minor setbacks, but I have taken care of them, and we should be back on schedule right enough."

He was properly cautious, the scientist. Even though Peel had assured him that his mobile phone and the scientist's were both secure against eavesdroppers, Goswell hated to have things of this nature spoken aloud outside the confines of his own home.

He nodded, then realized the man couldn't see him because this mobile didn't have cameras and whatnot connected to it. "Right, then. And those, ah, curious fellows you spoke of?"

"They are no longer curious, my lord. They have other things to occupy their minds at the moment."

"Very good, then. I'll ring off now."

Applewhite appeared and took the mobile, put it away. "Will there be anything else, milord?"

"Yes, see if you can hunt up Peel, would you? I'd like to have a word with him if he's available."

"At once, milord."

Applewhite departed to fetch the major. That, at least, would give Goswell time enough to sip his tea before it got cold.

From the corner of his eye, Goswell caught a motion. He looked directly that way and saw a rabbit over in the flower bed, nibbling on some greenery. Cheeky bastard! He wasn't fifty feet away! Of course, the dratted rabbits never came out when he had his shotgun at hand; they were smart enough to know that wasn't wise. His vision was not as keen as once it was, but he could, by God, still pot a thieving rabbit at fifty feet with either barrel of his Purdey fowling piece, thank you very much. He considered calling Applewhite and telling him to collect his shotgun so that he could blast the offending rabbit but decided against it. It was too lovely a morning to ruin with shotgun noise, satisfying as it might be to teach the bunny some proper manners. Better to have the care-taker loose his dogs on the things. They seldom caught one, the dogs, but they had such fun chasing them, and the rabbits tended to clear off for a time thereafter.

He sipped his tea. And when Peel approached, the rabbit decided to remove himself. Perhaps it somehow knew that Peel was an excellent shot with his ever-present pistol and that to stay might be unwise.

"My lord?"

" 'Morning, Major. Do sit down and have some tea."

"Thank you, my lord." Peel seated himself. A decent chap, the image of his father, old Ricky. He poured himself a cup of tea, black, no sugar.

"I've been thinking about this scientist fellow of ours."

"Bascomb-Coombs," Peel said.

"The very one. I've been thinking perhaps we should keep a close eye on him, if you know what I mean. He is valuable enough, but with the things he has tucked away in his head, we wouldn't want to have a falling out, now would we?"

"I shouldn't think a falling out is likely, my lord."

"Well, no, hardly. But one must be diligent and prepared, what?"

"I understand completely. As it happens, I have anticipated that you might feel this way, so I've set a watch upon our Mr. Bascomb-Coombs."

"Have you? Excellent. You're a good lad, Peel."

"Thank you, my lord. I appreciate your confidence in me."

Goswell smiled and sipped at his tea. It was good to have men like Peel around, men who knew how to do things without having to be led by the hand. Men of decent breeding who wouldn't embarrass one with social blunders or rash actions. More like him, and the Empire would never have sunk so low.

"Should Mr. Bascomb-Coombs should ever think to become a problem, my lord, we are of course prepared to deal with him in an… expedient manner."

"Ah, well, very good, then. Have a scone."

Peel smiled and gave him a short nod. Such a good fellow to have around. Pity about all that Irish business. Still, the regiment's loss was Goswell's gain. Would that he had another dozen like Peel. Good help was so hard to come by these days.

"Excellent scones, my lord."

"I'll have Applewhite tell Cook you said so."

This is how a gentleman was supposed to breakfast. On a sunny spring day at one's country estate, on tea and good scones, in the company of decent fellows. Indeed.

Toni and Alex sat in a small restaurant near their hotel, having coffee and breakfast. She said, "We have a flight leaving from Heathrow at noon. I couldn't get us on the Concorde or on a direct, so we'll have to change planes at Kennedy for a cropduster to Dulles."

Alex sipped his coffee, then said, "You could stay here. There's no need for you to kill your vacation."

"Stay here by myself? What fun would that be?"

"Well, this silat class you found sounds interesting."

"Two hours in the evening. If you go, I'm going. You'll need me at work."

He stirred his eggs around with his fork, not really interested in eating them. "Over easy," he said. "If these things had been fried any harder, you could play hockey with them."

"I'm sorry about Jay," she said.

"The doctor said he would be fine. Probably no lasting effects."

"Even so."

"I can't believe that he was injured due to something that happened in VR." Alex stared at the hard eggs.

"You saw the reports from the Brits and the Japanese. Same thing happened to their people, and they were both poking around in the same area Jay was."

"It still doesn't seem possible."

"Neither does breaking the code for the Pakistani train. Whoever did that is leaps and bounds ahead of us. They know things we don't."

"There's a cheery thought."

She looked at him. He seemed terribly glum. "Something else on your mind, Alex?"

He prodded the eggs a final time, then put his fork down. "Well, yeah. I didn't want to bother you with it."

"Go ahead, bother me. What?"

"I got a notice from my ex-wife's lawyers on an e-fax this morning."

"And…?"

"Megan is suing for total custody of Susan."

"Oh, no."

"Oh, yeah. Maybe I shouldn't have decked her new boyfriend."

"You said she was planning to do it before that."

"Yes. But that probably didn't help. Or that I said if he slept over again with Susie in the house, I'd throw an adultery charge at her."

"You were angry."

"Uh-huh. And stupid. She's not a bad woman, it's just that she knows how to get under my skin."

"Don't make excuses for her. She's a bitch."

He smiled. "Unfortunately, she's a bitch who is the mother of my only child, and she wants to take my daughter away. To have that bearded teacher become Daddy instead."

"What did your lawyer say?"

"What lawyers always say. Don't worry, he'll handle it, Megan won't win."

She reached across the table and took his hand. "It'll work out. You're too good a person; any judge will see that."

He smiled again, turned his hand up and squeezed hers. "Thanks. I love you."

"That's why I'm here."

She had loved Alex for a long time, and even though he could sometimes be exasperating, with the way he bottled up his emotions and the way he tried to shield her from things, in the grand cosmic scheme of things, these were minor problems. They'd get them worked out, eventually. She was sure of it.

Despite his resolve to get to bed early, the depth of the night found John Howard standing in a parking lot outside the Luxor Hotel and Casino, staring into the sky. He'd just taken a long midnight walk. A crisp, dry wind blew and whirled among the cars, stirring dust. The parking lot was surrounded by palm trees and other vegetation not native to this area. The Nevada summers were hot enough to convince the trees they could thrive — as long as they were watered — but the palms looked somehow uncomfortable as they stood around the edges of the concrete, swaying in the breeze, as if they knew they didn't belong here.

From the apex of the giant black pyramid that was the Luxor, a tight ring of spotlights, focused into one large ray, beamed straight up into the night. The heat from the laserlike column that shot up was intense enough that it sucked air and dust into itself, shoving it heavenward in a fountain of photons. Night had to watch Las Vegas from a distance; the city didn't allow the dark to come in.

Howard observed the boiling light beam. A moth that ventured too close to that white column would find itself roasted and blown halfway to the moon real quick.

There was something incredibly decadent about the whole city of Las Vegas, and the Luxor was a good example of it. More than four thousand rooms, at least half a dozen theme restaurants, a casino that never shut down, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, plus a boat voyage to the Land of the Dead, right in the atrium. It was ancient Egypt by way of Walt Disney, and for a dollar, you could tug on the arm of an Egyptian deity and take a chance on the big payoff. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, place your bets….

He had gone in and looked around and been amazed, but also overwhelmed, by it all. Here outside the massive structure, whose entrance was marked by a giant obelisk that shamed Cleopatra's Needle, and guarded by a sphinx in much better repair than the big one in Egypt, Howard got a sense of how truly rich the United States was. A nation that could produce such places as this, designed for leisure, for entertainment, for the millions who could afford to come and play here, well, that said a lot about such a country. He could hardly blame the owners, whose goal was to separate suckers from their money. They had done a great job. But as attractive and over the top as it was, there was something… repellent about it at the same time.

Las Vegas called to the party-loving hearts in people, the carpe diem, grasshopper, be-here-now-and-devil-take-tomorrow psyches. But it also called to the dark side, the desperate, the greedy, the addicted. It was plastic and neon and all that was cheap and shoddy about America. But it was also fun.

Howard laughed and began the hike back toward his own motel room. Getting to be a philosopher in your old age, eh, John? Next thing you know, you'll be sitting in a dark room contemplating your navel.

He laughed again. Well, maybe not just yet.

Ruzhyo awoke from a troubled sleep, coming alert all at once as he had learned to do years ago in Spetsnaz. He listened but heard nothing out of the ordinary. After a few minutes, he got up, went to the bathroom, then walked to the door of the trailer and opened it. Naked, he looked into the desert.

The night was clear, and stars beyond counting hung in the sky, hard, glittery pinpoints. A breeze blew and stirred the scrub and sand, but there was nothing else moving. No signs of life.

He rubbed at his chin. He had not shaved in several days, and perhaps it was time to do so.

A moment later, he closed the door. Something was wrong. Danger lurked outside his door. Even though he could not see nor hear it, he knew it was there.

He sighed. Now it was time to take the guns out and make ready. There were other things to check, too, preparations he had made when first he arrived. If Death had come to claim him at last, he would not feel sorrow, but if he lost the battle, he would do so trying his best to win. It was rusty and not used of late, but all he had left was his craft. He would display it as best he could.

Ruzhyo went back to the bathroom. He would wash his face and shave, then he would get dressed and make his preparations for war.

Chapter 8

Michaels and Toni were checking out of the hotel to catch a taxi to the airport when the desk clerk said, "It might be a good idea if you rang your air carrier, sir."

"Oh"

"Yes, sir. We've just gotten word that there's been something of a problem with flight schedules out of Heathrow. And out of Gatwick, as well, I'm afraid."

The clerk, as it turned out, was a master of understatement. Michaels's attempts to connect with British Airways were unsuccessful. All incoming lines, he was told by a recording, were temporarily busy, and would he please try again later?

While he was doing just that, Toni caught him by the arm and pulled him over to a television set in the hotel pub. The BBC had broken into regular programming for a special bulletin: Apparently nearly all the computer systems at the world's largest airports had gone bonkers. These included not only the ticketing and reservations computers but the flight control systems and auto-nav landing beacons as well. A quick check showed problems in Los Angeles, New York, Dallas — Fort Worth, Denver, Sydney, Auckland, Jakarta, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Moscow, Paris, and London. Passenger air travel at major terminals around the world had been brought to a virtual halt in a matter of minutes. Airline personnel were trying to manage, but without computers, the process was next to impossible. In many places, you couldn't buy a ticket or get a seat assignment. If you could, there wasn't likely to be plane waiting — assuming you could find the proper gate — and if you did find a plane, it wasn't going anywhere any time soon.

Today, at least, man was apparently not meant to fly.

"Jesus," Michaels said.

"It's a mess, all right. And you know what?"

Michaels nodded sourly. "Yeah. Somehow, it's going to become our mess."

He knew he shouldn't have said that, knew that the bored god who stood watch for fools was ever alert for just such comments. The response wasn't long in coming.

"Commander Michaels?"

Michaels found himself staring at a tall, green-eyed woman of maybe thirty. She had short, dishwater-blonde hair, and was dressed in a dark, conservative suit, with a skirt almost to her knees, and sensible flats. When she took a step toward him, he figured she was a gymnast. Or a dancer, maybe. Very nice…

"Yes?"

"My name is Angela Cooper, I'm with MI-6." She pulled out a wallet with a holographic ID and showed it to him. "Would you and Ms. Fiorella be good enough to accompany me? Minister Wood and Director-General Hamilton would like very much to have a word with you."

"We're supposed to catch a plane," he said.

Cooper nodded at the television, then gave him a small smile. "I'm afraid that's unlikely in the near future, sir. And if we are going to repair that problem, we could use your help. We've cleared it with your director."

Michaels looked at Toni. She raised her eyebrows in a what-the-hell expression.

Well, why not? It would probably beat sitting in a crowded waiting room at the airport. Besides, he had heard a lot about the MI-6 building; it would be interesting to see it, if nothing else.

Something about Angela Cooper grated on Toni. As Cooper drove the three of them through the London streets in the big right-hand-drive Dodge toward Vauxhall Crossing, Toni tried to pin it down. The woman was attractive, polite, and well-spoken. She was probably about the same age as Toni, give or take a year, and if she was an agent with MI-6, they probably had a lot in common. On the face of it, there didn't seem to be any reason to dislike Ms. Cooper. Maybe it was chemistry. Or maybe it was the expression on Alex's face when the woman had accosted them. That quickly veiled look of male interest. Alex said he was in love with her, and Toni believed him, but men were hard to fathom at times. If she hadn't been standing there, what would Alex's response to the tall dirty-blonde have been? Would he have flirted? Done more?

She didn't like herself for feeling jealous. There was no reason to believe Alex was unfaithful to their relationship, even in his thoughts, but it was how she felt. Nobody ever said love was logical. Or if they did, they lied.

"This is Vauxhall Bridge Road," Cooper said. "It's a straight shot across the Thames from here. You'll see our building coming up on the left, just there. It's right off the tube station." She pointed, and Toni leaned forward from where she sat in the rear to look.

The MI-6 building was an imposing and — for London — quite unusual-looking structure. The stone appeared to be cream-colored, there were lots of windows, and there seemed also a bunch of green on it — glass, Toni assumed.

Seated in front next to Cooper, Alex said, "I thought internal security was MI-5's responsibility, that MI-6 handled matters in foreign countries."

"Rather like the FBI and CIA?" Cooper said. "Well, to a degree, yes. But there is some overlap. Over the last few years, MI-5 has shifted many of its resources to focus on Northern Ireland and against organized crime and benefit fraud. The consensus at HQ is that this computer threat is probably foreign, which gives us some small leeway to look into it. We're all on the same team, after all."

Alex smiled. "That doesn't sound a lot like the FBI and CIA."

Cooper smiled back at him, flashing her perfect teeth. "Yes, of course, we have our interdepartmental rivalries as well. And MI-5—we call it Security Service, SS — does get a bit sticky if we tread too hard on their territory. But our ministers are rather put out by all this business, and so SIS — that's us at MI-6, the Secret Intelligence Service — are helping out a bit. The truth is, our computer system is better than SS's, so we're rather on point. Although I suspect we are somewhat behind you in the States in that regard. We've heard very good things about your organization over here. You're an offshoot of CITAC, aren't you? InfraGard?"

She was referring to the old Computer Investigations and Infrastructure Threat Assessment Center the FBI had created in the mid-nineties to deal with computer crime.

"Not exactly," Alex said, "but there's a connection, yes. You've obviously done your homework."

Cooper smiled again, another high-wattage, even-toothed, white flash.

Toni definitely did not like her, no question, and if Alex didn't stop grinning like a fool at everything Ms. Cooper said, he was going to be in trouble.

Obviously done her homework. Yeah. Right.

Ruzhyo's preference for a handgun was a small caliber, like those he had grown accustomed to in Spetsnaz. In fact, such weapons were as efficient as the bigger bores the Americans preferred, if one could place the shot properly. A.22 in the eye was easily worth a.357 round in the chest, and it was much easier to shoot the small-bore pistol well: there was almost no recoil, little noise and muzzle flash, and a longer barrel made the weapon more accurate.

Americans were generally taught to shoot for the center of mass, and a bigger bullet was an advantage, given the relative weakness of all handguns, but they could have taken a page from the Israelis or Spetsnaz in that regard. With enough practice, head shots came naturally.

When he had come to stay here in the desert, Ruzhyo had bought two guns, both used. The first was a target pistol, a Browning IMSA Silhouette model, based on the company's Buck Mark design. It was a straight blow-back semiauto, held ten rounds in its magazine, and had a nine-inch barrel topped with a Tasco ProPoint sight. The sight was electronic. It created in the field of vision a tiny, red, parallax-free dot. Operation was simple: You chambered a round, turned the sight on, and put the dot on a target, and if you squeezed the trigger with care, that dot was where the bullet went. At ten meters, he could center-punch a dime with the Browning. At a hundred meters, with the gun propped on a secure rest, Ruzhyo could hit a hand-sized target all day long. He had, in practice, hit a human-sized target at almost three hundred meters, once he zeroed in and knew how much the bullet would fall and drift. Even such a small pellet as the Browning spat would be disconcerting if it hit you solidly at that distance. Not the best choice for long-range gunnery, but in theory, the ammunition he used, CCI Minimags, could fly a mile and a half. A rifle was a better weapon, of course, but the pistol could be hidden under a coat if need be, and still be used to strike a man in the head at distances well beyond that at which most shooters could operate most service handguns.

The other weapon in his small arsenal was a Savage Model 69 Series E twelve-gauge pump shotgun. Also bought on the gray market, in a different town than the pistol, the shotgun was not as good a piece as the more expensive makes that used double-rail slide actions. Having only a single connector from the pump, which was less efficient in case of a jam, the weapon held five rounds — his preference was for #4 buckshot — but it had the short-barreled configuration the Americans called a riot gun, and was close enough to what he wanted when he went looking.

He could have bought a good hunting rifle and scope to increase his range. If, however, somebody wanted to assassinate him from five hundred meters out with their own high-powered rifle, he had better ways of dealing with that than a long-distance sniper duel. He had circled the trailer at ranges where a good shooter could see and hit him, and there were only a few places with a proper line of sight on his home. He had marked these and installed at these places certain defenses. Of course, they could take him while he was away from the trailer, but one could only cover so many contingencies.

Last night, he had cleaned and oiled both guns, then loaded them with fresh ammunition. He had also loaded four spare magazines for the.22, and he had ten extra shells for the twelve-gauge in loops on a belt he could strap around his waist. If he had to use the shotgun to defend himself, the situation would be close-quarters, bad, and he probably wouldn't get a chance to reload; still, one could not be certain. At that point, it would likely be a matter of selling himself as dearly as possible. He might lose, but if he could help it, the winner would not leave untouched.

He had done what he could. He could have tried to run, but it was probably too late for that. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and he was as ready as he was going to get. Now it was a matter of waiting.

He was good at that, waiting. Right now, he would get some sleep. He might not get the chance again for a time. Or ever.

He moved to his bed, set the shotgun and pistol on the floor nearby, and, next to them, a small radio transmitter. He stretched out. He took several deep breaths, relaxed as much as he was able, and, in a few minutes, fell asleep.

He dreamed of Anna.

Chapter 9

"How far?" Howard said.

"About twenty minutes," Fernandez said.

"Turn the air conditioner down a couple of notches; it's not that hot."

Fernandez said, "But you don't want to let the heat get ahead of you out here, John. Probably be ninety by noon, and you know how these trucks suck up the sun."

"If this goes as planned, we'll be on a plane for D.C. by noon."

"Never hurts to be prepared," the sergeant offered.

Howard shook his head. He and Fernandez were alone in the command car, a sand-colored Humvee Special. "Automatic transmission, power steering, air-conditioning, and you're worried about staying ahead of the heat? You're getting soft in your old age, Julio."

"Perhaps the general would prefer to ride in his horse-drawn carriage next time? I'm sure old Nelly would be more to the general's liking."

"Well, at least she wouldn't complain about the heat." "And you could limber up your buggy whip if she did. One of many in your front closet, I am sure."

Howard smiled. "Okay, let's hear it again."

Fernandez shot a quick glance heavenward. "Sir. We've got three two-man teams — that is to say, two-person teams — hunkered down watching out there in Cow Skull Gulch. If Ivan sticks his head out the door and we so desire, we can pot him like Davy Crockett barking a squirrel. We've got the Big Squint footprint for eight A.M. start-op, and we've got a National Guard chopper on standby if we need it — which we won't — over at Nellis. We've got two squads of bored, combat-ready troops in the transports fore and aft, and we got one broken-down Spetsnaz guy in an Airstream trailer in the middle of nowhere who can't run and can't hide."

Howard nodded. "All right."

Fernandez caught the edge of his worry. "What, John? You and I could go in and grab this sucker by ourselves — and you could stay in the car. It's just one guy, no matter how good he might be."

"Probably what the Germans thought about Sergeant York," Howard said.

"Jesus. You worry way too much." Fernandez clicked the AC control down a couple of notches. "Maybe your brain is froze. So how did Tyrone do in the boomerang thing?"

It was not the most artful change of subject he'd ever heard, but probably Julio was right, he ought not to be worrying about this one guy in the desert. Go in with the protocols, hit their marks, and it would be a big anticlimax, they'd drag the guy in and let the headshrinkers go to work on him. "Came in third."

"Really? That's pretty good for his first time, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. Beat his personal best, and he was prouder of that than he was the placing."

"He should be. You're not so bad a father — for an old guy. I might have a few questions for you once I change my own status in that arena."

Howard smiled. He could imagine the first time Julio and Joanna's baby ran an unexpected fever, or spit up something green, or got colic. He'd made a few of those panicky late-night calls to his mother back when Tyrone had been a newborn.

"Something funny, John?"

"Oh, yeah. You at two in the morning with a crying baby. I'm going to have Joanna video it."

Howard took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This was normal operation jitters, he always got them before the guns went to lock and load. Maybe if he'd been in a real war zone with some battlefield experience under his belt, it would be different. He was sure it must be.

Jay Gridley sat in a motorized wheelchair, staring at two men playing Ping-Pong. His idea of lying around for weeks in a hospital if something happened to you was apparently behind the times. They had guys who'd had heart surgery last night up and walking today, pushing IV poles up and down the halls. Apparently, moving was better than lying still when it came to aftereffects of big problems. Some of them, anyhow.

His parents were on the way to see him. They'd be here this afternoon, and he wasn't really looking forward to that. They'd be upset and wanting to take care of him, and he… he… uh…

What had he just been thinking?

Another surge of fear washed over him, coating him with another layer of sticky sweat. The physical thing, that was bad, yeah, but they said that would respond to treatment, and in a few weeks, he'd be his old self, could walk, talk, do the funky chicken; but his mind didn't seem to be working right. He kept running his thoughts together into a big hodgepodge, a slipsum, and then losing them altogether.

That scared the hell out of him. He could interface with VR with a bad arm and leg, hell, with no arms or legs at all, but if his brain didn't… if his brain didn't…

Didn't what?

He was afraid, and for a moment, he didn't even know why he was afraid, but then it came back. His mind. His brain. His thoughts weren't tracking. It was like trying to do calculus as you were falling asleep. You couldn't concentrate, couldn't keep the train on the track, couldn't… couldn't hold on to it!

He had to get to a VR set and get on-line. He had to see if he could still do the most important thing in all the world. It wasn't just his job, it was his life. He couldn't imagine himself without being able to access computers.

He flagged one of the nurses passing through the rec room. He didn't try to talk, that still scared him, too, but he made the two-handed sign for a VR set: forefingers over his eyes, thumbs over his ears.

She nodded. "Sure. Just down that way and to the left. Come on, I'll take you."

He waved her off, then used his good hand to operate the wheelchair's joystick. He would find the computer himself. Plug in, and see what he could do.

If he could do anything at all.

Major Peel leaned back in the chair in front of his desk in an office provided by his lordship in what had once been the groundskeeper's cottage. Three hundred years or so ago, during the Reformation, the cottage-cum-office had been built — as a Catholic church. In those days, with the Church of England cranking up to full steam, it was worth your neck to be caught practicing Catholicism in some parts of the country, so the faithful rich built small sanctuaries behind their manors and secretly gathered with a select few to worship. As long as they were circumspect about it, and as long as the lord of the manor was sufficiently wealthy and well thought of, local officials turned a blind eye to the practice.

The fact that the king wanted a divorce was no reason to give up generations of cherished belief and ritual, snap, just like that.

The window over Peel's desk wasn't stained glass, but it had that triple-hump Father-Son-Holy-Ghost shape inset into the mortared stone, and the desk itself sat upon the spot where once had been an altar.

Peel looked at the computer screen, watching the video, and listened to the report from Lieutenant Wilson, one of his best men. Wilson led the team they had covering Bascomb-Coombs.

"You're certain he doesn't know he's being observed?"

"Certain, sir. He might be smarter than an auditorium full of dons at Oxford, but he doesn't track very well in the real world. We've stayed away from fiddling with his computer hardware and programs — he does have those rigged with safeguards we don't want to try — but we've got spycams planted all over his house and office. There are units in the ceiling over his workstations in his lab and at his home that zero on his keyboard and monitor. He can have the best security in the world in the system, but all we have to do is watch him type or listen to him vox his codes in. And we've also got recordings of everything he sees on-screen."

"And this business with the airports is untraceable?"

"Yes, sir. Everything this chap does on-line is untraceable. He's rigged some way to overload a virtual reality headset — we don't have a clue how he did that — and he's put several snoopers into the hospital with some kind of stroke."

"Really?"

"Yes, sir. There is one small worry we've come across. It seems that MI-6 has contacted the head of the FBI's computer crime unit, Net Force. He's here in London, working with them."

"Already? That was fast."

"Apparently he was in town, attending a conference or some such."

"Hmm. That bears watching. Keep me posted."

"Sir."

"Anything else?"

"Nothing concerned with the project. But there's a small item you might find interesting. You remember Plekhanov?"

"The Russian who was going to take over Asia? Of course." They'd had a nice piece of change doing a little training for one of Plekhanov's groups.

"After his capture, there were a few loose ends," Wilson continued. "The most notable of which was the Spetsnaz wetwork agent, Ruzhyo."

"Ah, yes. Nasty piece of work, that one. Got away, did he?"

"Apparently only temporarily, according to what Bascomb-Coombs has learned. It seems they are about to collect Mr. Ruzhyo somewhere out in the American West."

"Too bad for him."

"Just thought you'd find it interesting, sir."

"Yes, well, keep me up to speed on new findings."

After he clicked off, Peel looked up at the old window. Interesting developments in all this business. While it was not the regiment, it did have its moments. Indeed it did.

"All set?"

"Yes, sir," Fernandez said. "Sniper teams in place, ground troops to their positions. The place is surrounded, and the Strike Team is making dust for the trailer now. Off-road, in case he's got it mined." Fernandez grinned to show he wasn't serious about that part.

The two men stood in their modified SIPEsuits next to the Hummer, parked half a mile back on the main road — the only road — leading to Ruzhyo's Airstream. Howard had his visor up and used his silicone-armored field-grade ten-power Leupold binoculars, sweeping back and forth slowly, looking at the target. "No sign of him. He must not be an early riser."

"His problem," Fernandez said. "Our boys'll be there in a minute, a few flash-bangs, some emetic gas, and Mr. Assassin wakes up half-blind, puking last night's dinner, and in deep feces. You should have let me lead the team, no point in both of us missing all the fun."

"You're about to be a married man with a child, Julio, and if you think I'm going to explain something happening to you to Joanna, forget it. Better get used to sitting at a desk."

"That'll be the day."

"Sooner than you think, Sergeant."

He looked at the trailer. So far, so good.

Ruzhyo was already awake when he heard the sound of the approaching vehicle. He came up, strapped on the belt with the extra shotgun shells, then picked up the shotgun and slung it over his shoulder by the nylon strap. He collected the pistol and the radio control unit, then walked to the window over the sink. He set the Browning down, hooked the control to his belt, and looked out.

A squat, squarish, dun-colored truck rolled toward the trailer at a good speed, coming up the slight rise ten meters to the left of the driveway, paralleling it. A cloud of pale dust billowed behind the truck.

A military assault? With the driver staying off the road to avoid mines? Smart. If they were military, they'd probably be wearing light armor, so his guns weren't going to do him much good unless he was very precise with his shooting. Something to keep in mind.

He took a couple of deep breaths and let them out, found a glass and ran a little water into it, rinsed his mouth, then spat into the sink. He put the glass down, stuck the pistol into his belt, and walked to the door.

Guests had come to call, and it was time to put out the welcome mat.

He pulled the radio control unit from his belt. There were four buttons on the device, each of which controlled a signal made stronger by a booster hidden in the satellite dish installed on top of the trailer.

He sighed and pushed the first button.

"What the hell is that?" Howard said.

A circular wall of gray appeared from the ground around the trailer, roiling up into the still-cool morning air. The dark gray cloud obscured the trailer in a matter of seconds.

"He's got smoke," Fernandez said unnecessarily into the LOSIR headset built into his helmet. "Slow it down."

The leader of the Strike Team said, "No shit."

Howard was aware of the exchange in his own headset, but he was dropping his visor and switching his helmet's viewer to IR.

Not much help; whatever was making the smoke was also making some heat, and he couldn't see through it.

He called up the feed from Big Squint's footprint, but the computer-augmented satellite image didn't show anything inside the ring of smoke, save the trailer.

"He's still inside," Howard said. "So far. Proceed with caution."

"Copy that," the Strike Team leader said.

Ruzhyo looked through the window over the door. The smoke bombs had obscured the trailer from view. In another few seconds, they would finish smoking and explode into white hot flares, which ought to confuse any sensor devices pointed at him.

He looked at the second button. Nodded to himself. He hadn't killed anybody in a while, but this attack was obviously military in origin, and those men and women hiding at the sniper points would be soldiers and prepared to shoot him dead if so ordered. They knew the risks of combat. And if they did not, they were about to find out.

Hidden at nine places where a sniper might conceal himself for a field of fire centered upon the trailer were twenty-seven antipersonnel units buried in large paper cups turned upside down and covered with a thin layer of sand and soil. These were variants on the old Bouncing Betty; a small compressed-gas charge would pop the cigarette-pack-sized APUs up five or six feet, where a second, stronger charge would explode and blast a handful of steel BBs all around itself in a devastating pattern. An unarmored man standing within a few yards of the APU would be cut down, dead or seriously wounded. Even with armor, some of the pellets could find a seam or unprotected spot and cause dangerous or even fatal wounds.

He pushed the button.

Howard's LOSIR com came alive with startled yells and screams, overlaid with the sounds of small explosions, both on-line and then, a second or two later, echoing across the terrain.

"Report!"

"We got a mine here, Colonel, Spalding is hit and bleeding!"

"We got blasted at S2, sir, dusted us pretty good, no injuries!"

"Reader is down, her face is a bloody mess!"

"John — look."

Howard looked at the smoke, saw bright lights flaring through the haze. What the hell was going on here?

When the first of the smoke bombs burned down to their magnesium pots and flared, Ruzhyo opened the trailer door and stepped out. He had only fifteen yards to travel, but he needed to be in position before his heat sig would be the only one in the area, in case they had sat or high overfly surveillance.

He hurried.

The hidey-hole was disguised by a sheet of plywood, lined all around with heat-reflectives and absorbent deadstrip material. He'd glued dirt and brush on top of the board, and once in place, it was virtually invisible and solid enough to walk on. The chamber was only a meter wide by two meters long, but he wasn't planning on staying there that long.

In the hole, he squeezed a cold chemlume and got enough light so he could see to power up the battery-operated TV monitor. A camera on top of the trailer — also hidden inside the satellite dish — and a second camera in the garbage dump behind the place gave smoke-shrouded, grainy, but serviceable views of the trailer and the area around it, including his Dodge SUV.

The car was loaded with things necessary to make the rest of his plan work.

Give it a few more seconds for the smoke to clear.

"Smoke is clearing," came the report over Howard's LOSIR.

"Proceed with extreme caution," Howard replied.

"You still want him alive?"

Howard gritted his teeth. He had four wounded — so far — and, according to the medic, two of them hit hard enough they needed to be gotten to a hospital PDQ. The Guard copter was already on the way.

"Yes. Alive, if possible. But protect yourselves as necessary. I don't want anybody else going down, understand? If you have to shoot, you shoot."

"Yes, sir."

Now, Ruzhyo thought. He pressed the third of the four buttons on his control unit.

"Heads up!" Fernandez said.

Howard looked. A vehicle zoomed out of the smoke, coming up the road. Ruzhyo's SUV.

"He's running for it!"

The chatter of subgun fire echoed. Howard brought his binoculars around to frame the fleeing vehicle. He saw pockmarks appear on the metal where the bullets hit. What an idiot! Did he think he could just hop in his car and drive away?

Ruzhyo pushed the final button.

Before Howard could adjust the focus on his binoculars and get a look at the driver, the car blew up. The ground shook where they stood, and the blast wave rolled over them with a noise like the end of the world. A fireball rose inside a mushroom cloud like a miniature atomic bomb. This wasn't the gas tank going up; the car had been rigged with big explosives.

"Holy shit!" Fernandez said. "What the hell did he have in there?"

When the smoke cleared a bit, there was nothing left of the car except part of the frame and two flaming, smoking tires. More burning debris was scattered for hundreds of meters all around.

Howard stared. Jesus Christ! What a fuck up!

"Looks like you were right to be worried, Colonel. I stand corrected."

Howard just shook his head.

Chapter 10

Jay Gridley sat cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in an orange robe, the smell of patchouli incense heavy in the cool air. The thin reed mat under him did little to stop the cold radiating from the flagstones into his backside, and his shaved head was chilly. Through an open window, he saw snow piled ten feet thick, a blanket that shrouded everything in crisp, glistening white. A wordless vocal chant echoed in the background, a low and pulsing drone, and light inside the massive chamber was provided by hundreds of candles.

At the front of the room, seated in full lotus on a short wooden platform that put him only a few inches higher than the monks, was the head monk, Sojan Rinpoche. The man was also bald, probably seventy, and had smile wrinkles that didn't quit. Gridley could see why, after a few minutes of listening to the guru speak. He smiled a lot.

At the moment, the old man was talking about some kind of Buddhist deity:

"… in Sanskrit, he is called Yamantaka. In China, they call him Yen-an-te-chia. In Tibet, we speak of him as Gshin-rji-gshed. Everywhere, we know him as He Who Conquers Death, one of the Eight Terrible Ones, the drag-shed, Guardian of the Faith, and patron of the Dge-lugs-pa.

"He is terrible to behold, this manifestation of Manjusri bodhisattva. Long ago, during a mighty battle in Tibet, Gshin-rji-gshed took his form to engage and defeat Yama, God of Death. He has nine heads, thirty-four arms, and sixteen feet. He is the Horror to Behold, the Mighty Terror, the Trampler of Demons.

"He is," the old man said, smiling, "not somebody you want to fuck with."

Gridley did a mental double take at the last sentence. That seemed weird, coming from a Tibetan holy man.

He sighed. This was the old man's scenario — if indeed he was an old man and not somebody faking it — and he didn't much care for it. Too austere. And now that he was here, he didn't really understand why he had come. What was it that he had hoped to find?

The nurse. The nurse had told him to look this guy up. After he had ripped the VR set off and thrown it on the floor because he hadn't been able to concentrate without losing it. Oh, he could still use VR, but only in a passive, customer sort of way. He couldn't create it. He couldn't manipulate it. He would begin okay, but after a minute or two, he would drift, and the imagery failed.

A computer operative who couldn't run a computer. A VR worker who couldn't work VR. He was screwed. His life was over.

But the nurse — she was some kind of Buddhist or something — she had given him this guy's web address, told him to check it out. He'd helped others, she'd said.

Gridley had nothing to lose, so he went. But he didn't see how Gshin-rji-whateverthehellhisnamewas was going to help squat.

As if reading his mind, the old man clapped his hands once, and the monks, save for Gridley, all vanished. The room around him swirled and shifted, and he found himself sitting in a comfortable armchair facing the guru, who also sat in a chair. In place of the orange robes, Jay wore slacks, a pullover sweater, and motorcycle boots, and the old man wore jeans and a work shirt. The Tibetan's legs were crossed at the ankles, he sported Nikes, and he had that big smile again. He looked like somebody's kindly old grandfather come for a visit.

"Better?" he said.

Gridley blinked. "Uh, yeah, I guess so."

"A lot of folks want the monastery imagery. It makes them feel as if they've found the real thing. That Tibet, unfortunately, only exists in the movies these days."

He regarded Jay with a straight, direct gaze. "You have a problem."

"Yeah."

"Your aura is fractured."

Jesus, auras? Time to bail—

"That is to say, you appear to have some difficulty concentrating. Drugs? Or a medical problem? Tumor? Stroke?"

How the hell could he tell that? Nothing like that showed in VR!

"Uh…"

"Take your time. You want to check out, come back later, that's cool."

Jay shook his head. "You don't seem like any guru I ever heard of."

"You want the monastery back?"

"No, I — it's just that—"

"Expectation," the old man said. "That one is a killer. You had a idea, an expectation of what I was supposed to be, so whenever I pop off and do something that doesn't fit, it's confusing. And you're already confused enough, right?"

"Uh, yeah, right."

"Well, we'll get to that. First things first. What shall I call you?"

"Webnom or realnom?"

"Doesn't matter, just something you'll answer to."

"Jay."

"Okay. Call me Saji. You came for some clarity, right?"

"I — uh, I'm not sure."

Saji laughed. "What you mean is, you didn't come for all this Buddhist bullshit, demons and Dharma and all. But you do want clarity."

"Yeah."

"Well, being a Buddhist doesn't get in the way of that. In fact, it helps. But we'll get back to that later, too. First things first. The nature of your injury?"

"They say I had some kind of stroke."

"Fine, we can deal with that."

"I'm glad you can."

"Not me, we, Jay." He tapped his right temple with one finger. "Our brains have a lot of built-in redundancies. You get a short in one spot, it's entirely possible to reroute the signal to a place where the wiring is better. You might not even need that, but we'll see. I'm going to ask you a series of questions, you respond however you like."

"Okay."

"What is eighty-seven minus thirteen?"

Christ-arithmetic?

"Yes, arithmetic. To start out." He grinned.

Jay sighed. When you're at the bottom, the only way you can go is up.

"Seventy-four," he said.

"And who is the President of the United States…?"

"What have we got, Julio?"

"Sir, not much. We've come up with some bloody pieces of scorched bone, something that looks like burnt hair, and a couple of teeth. Whatever he had in that car did a job on him. I doubt they'll ever find all of him."

Howard sighed. Yes, indeed. He wasn't looking forward to writing this report.

"All right. Finish the trailer, leave two men to watch the site, and we'll get the lab boys out here. Pack it up and let's go home."

"Yes, sir."

Howard looked at the crater where the target's car had gone up in the blast. This wasn't the plan, but at least they had taken him down. The man had been a professional killer. Aside from whatever else he had done, Reader was in bad shape, and three others were wounded enough to need hospital time. The target deserved to be questioned and imprisoned for a thousand years, but this would have to do. Quick and rough justice, Howard could live with it.

He turned away and headed for the Humvee. Julio had been right to keep the air conditioner turned up. It was hot out here and getting hotter.

Damn, he hated this.

In his burrow, Ruzhyo tried to sleep. It was hot, and he was exhausted, but he couldn't relax enough to drop off. He had considered wiring the trailer so that it would go up with the car, but had decided against it. Perhaps somebody could get some use from it. It had been, for what it was, a good home for him. And more importantly, anybody who remained behind to watch would surely use the place for shade from the hot sun, or even go inside to run the air conditioner.

From inside, there was no window that looked directly upon Ruzhyo's hiding place; he had made certain of that.

By now, they would have found the remains of what he had left inside a sterilized and vacuum-sealed plastic carton for them to find: Leavings from a barber shop's trash; several uncut bones, raw meat, and blood mixed with anticoagulant made from rat poison, all from a pig. And the final touch, a human skull from a high school biology skeleton, stolen and wrapped tightly inside the pig's scalp, packed with the pig's brain. Such things would not fool a pathologist for an instant, but someone who had just seen a car blasted to smoking bits might think the fragments of bone and blood and brain human. And they might think so long enough to allow him to escape.

Nothing was certain, but it was a chance.

The cameras showed men getting into vehicles and leaving. They would post a guard, probably no more than two or three soldiers. It would be hot, and the guards would remove their helmets or some of their armor or go inside the trailer. When they did, he would be ready. They would have checked the trailer for explosives and, finding none, would feel safe.

Pistol held loosely in his hand, Ruzhyo tried again to sleep. Even a few minutes would be good. He was so tired.

MI-6 HQ looked just like any other modern office building inside. Michaels wasn't sure what he'd expected, especially given that Net Force HQ also looked like some typical corporate structure; still, he half expected to see James Bond or Q or somebody skulking through the halls on the way to do the king's business.

They sat on a comfortable couch in the office of the director-general, Matthew Hamilton. Along with Hamilton were Angela Cooper, Minister of Parliament Clifton Wood, and himself. Toni had stepped out of the room to call the FBI director.

"… would be in our mutual interests to resolve this matter as soon as possible," the minister said.

"I agree," Michaels said, "though I don't understand how we can be of much help here. You have your own people."

Wood and Hamilton exchanged quick glances. Hamilton cleared his throat and took the lead. "Well, yes, but you see, that's something of the problem. Both MI-5 and MI-6 want to jump right on this, and there tends to be some… professional rivalry."

Cooper gave Michaels a brief flash of a smile. So much for her downplaying such things.

"It is our thought that a joint task force with the head of Net Force in charge might move things along faster. Neither Security nor Secret Intelligence want to give up their autonomy to each other, but with a third-party ally…" he let it drift to a stop, raised his eyebrows and spread his hands.

Michaels nodded. Politics. Of course. And there was more than met the ear here, too, if they were willing to bring in a foreign service to mitigate the situation. He couldn't imagine the FBI and the CIA allowing British Intelligence to come in and take over a joint operation. No, there was a lot more going on here than they were telling.

The door opened, and Toni stepped back into the room, clipping her virgil to her belt as she entered. She gave Michaels a short nod.

So. The director had put them on the hook.

He nodded back at Toni, then looked at Hamilton. "We will, of course, be happy to help in any way we can."

That brought smiles from all three Brits.

Michaels wished he felt like smiling. What he wanted to do was go home. He had Jay in the hospital, the legal problems with his ex-wife, and whatever else might have gone on while he was away.

His virgil cheeped. Michaels frowned. It was set to refuse all but priority-one calls. He pulled the unit from his belt and looked at it. Incoming call from Colonel Howard. "Gentlemen, if you will excuse me for a moment?"

The MP and MI-6 commander both smiled and nodded again.

Michaels stepped into the hall. Maybe it was good news.

Chapter 11

Tyrone Howard headed for his locker, keeping an eye out for Essay, the terror of the hall. Since Bella had dumped him, Tyrone's semiconnection to Bonebreaker LeMott, Bella's jock high school boyfriend, had become uncertain. Essay knew that his chances against Bonebreaker were zippo, and so for a time being Bella's friend had conferred a certain kind of immunity against the brain-dead thug. Essay — from the initials S.A., which stood for sore ass, which came from Brontosaurus — would just as soon thump you as look at you, and Tyrone's chances against him in a fight were also zippo, so it paid to be on the alert.

He made it to the locker without seeing Essay. Maybe he'd been kicked out of dear old Eisenhower Middle School for smoking again. That would be nice.

He was dumping his carry bag into the locker and not paying attention when somebody said, "Hey, Tyrone!"

He turned. It was Nadine Harris, the boomerang girl.

"Hey, Nadine."

She drifted over through the traffic flow, moving gracefully, like a swimmer treading water. "You got morning schedule, too. Exemplary."

"Yeah. Who's your anchor?"

"Peterson," she said.

"He's okay. I had him for Media One. What kind of register you got?"

"Eng Two, Math Three, Bioscience One, Media Two, Physical Three, History Two."

"That's pretty heavy redge for the quarter," he said.

She shrugged. "Not so bad. I tested high 'cause my last school was a couple steps ahead. How about you?"

"Eng Two, Math Three, Media Three, Comp Four, and, uh, MH One."

"Talk about my redge being heavy, whee-doggy, Ty! Comp Four? I didn't think you could take that unless you were in high school. And MH? Isn't that Military History?"

His turn to shrug. "My dad is military. I thought I'd check it out. He's told me some interesting stuff. He used to throw, and there's a section about throw sticks in the class."

"No feek? Wow. A dad who throws? He any good?"

"Well… not really. He, like, did it as a kid, had a couple of wooden 'rangs, entry-level plywoods. But he knows all kinds of things about battles and like that, and how the abos used to use their sticks in fights."

"Exemplary," she said.

While they were talking, Tyrone felt a strange sensation, as if he was being… watched. He glanced around, being careful not to be too obvious. Maybe Essay was around and had targeted him.

Belladonna Wright cruised down the hall with two of her girlfriends, and she was looking right at Tyrone.

His shoulders went tight, his face hot, his bowels loose. He wanted to run and hide under a rock.

She was as beautiful as ever, Bella was, maybe more so, and his memory of sitting on her bed kissing her, putting his hands on her body…

Don't go down that path, Tyrone. It will show. That would be embarrassing cubed.

But it was already too late. He slacked his grip on the carry bag, allowed it to hang lower, in front of his crotch.

"You okay, Tyrone?" Nadine said. "You look like you just swallowed a bug or something."

"Ah, no — I mean, yes, I'm okay. I — uh, just remembered something I forgot to do. A chore. At home."

Lame, Tyrone, blankwit slipbrain lame!

Bella steamed by like a battleship with two escort destroyers, awesome to behold in her beauty. She didn't look at him when she passed.

Nadine must have caught something in his face because she turned to look.

"Whoa. Who is that?"

"Belladonna Wright," Tyrone said. He fought to keep his voice from squeaking. He almost made it.

"Out of my league," Nadine said. "Killer wallpaper."

"Wallpaper?"

"Yeah, you know, it doesn't have to do anything except hang there and be pretty. Bet she gets invited everywhere, just to be looked at. You know her?"

"Not really," Tyrone said. He had thought he knew her, but he'd sure been wrong. She'd tossed him like a dirty sock.

"The beautiful get it free. When you're like me, you have to work for it."

"What, like you? You aren't ugly or anything."

She gave him another little shrug, looked away. "Put me next to that one—" she nodded in Bella's direction " — I'd disappear."

Tyrone didn't say anything, but that was true enough.

"I hope she doesn't have a brain, too. That would be the dregs — gorgeous and smart."

She didn't have to worry about that, Tyrone knew. Bella wasn't completely dull, but she wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, either. He didn't want to say that, though. Even after what she'd done, that seemed… disloyal, somehow. Besides, if word got back to Bonebreaker that Tyrone was doing oral graffiti on Bella, that would be bad. She might have half a dozen guys in orbit, but Bonebreaker was definitely one of them. Tyrone kept track. And they didn't call him Bonebreaker for nothing.

"Hey, I gotta go," Nadine said. "Keep a line open, okay? We'll get together and throw sometime."

"Yeah," he said. "We need to do that."

He watched her go. She had a muscular step, athletic and graceful, but she wasn't in Bella's class for looks, for sure.

Well, fine. Bella was history as far as he was concerned; gone, past, done, and he wasn't looking for a replacement. Maybe he and Nadine would get together and throw 'rangs, that was okay. She was good at that, he could learn from her, maybe. It wouldn't be so bad to have somebody who was into the birds to work out with, even if she was on the plain side. She had an arm and she could make a 'rang fly, that was the thing. He didn't have to kiss her.

"Colonel?" It was Julio.

Howard looked up from the holoproj image over his desk, the report upon which he was laboring. There wasn't any way to make it sound good, what had happened out there in Nevada. The only consolation was that he hadn't lost any of his troops. Reader was going to need some extensive plastic surgery on her face, but she'd pull through. When she'd heard the launch pop, she'd been prone, facing away from the APW, but she'd turned to look. Her face shield was down, but because of the angle, a couple of the pellets had zipped under the bottom of shield, a freak of bad timing. If her head had been inclined a centimeter or two more, the Lexan would have stopped the shrapnel. As it was, she was lucky the pellets hadn't gone deeper into her skull than they had. No brain damage—

"I hate to have to tell you this, John, but we've got a real problem."

"Worse than yesterday?"

"Yes, sir, afraid so."

"Wonderful. Spill it."

"Lindholm and Hobbs are dead, both shot in the head at close range, small-caliber rounds."

"What?"

"Their transport is gone. We've got teams in the air, deputies and state police on the ground looking, but no sign of it so far."

Howard stared at him. How could this be?

"Forensics says the teeth and skull bits we brought back are human, but they came from somebody who's been dead a long time. The blood and other bones, that piece of brain, they all belong to a member of the domestic Suidae family — a pig."

The implications hit Howard fast and hard. "He's alive. He wasn't in the car."

"Yes, sir, that's the only thing that makes any sense. He must have hidden somewhere — I've got a search unit combing the area — waited until our men were off guard, then deleted them and stole their ride."

"Shit," Howard said.

"My sentiments exactly. We underestimated this guy bad, John. He foxed us."

"Not we, Julio. Me. The buck stops here."

Fernandez stared at the floor. He knew it was true.

Howard stared into space. This was terrible. In the years he'd been running the Net Force military arm, he'd had several troops wounded in brush firefights, but he'd never had one killed. And now, because he had screwed up, he had two soldiers down. Oh, man!

And worse, the guy who had done it had gotten away.

Now what was he going to do?

"You sure you don't want to go?" Toni said.

"I'd like to, I really would," Alex said, "but I need to go over all this crap." He waved at the laptop on the bed table.

"I could stay and help you."

"I appreciate it, but you can't read it for me, you might as well take a break while you can. Go, work out, burn off some tension. You'll feel better, and you can spell me later. This class is important to you. I saw your face when you got back from it. Go. Have fun."

She nodded. She could see his point. She really did want to go to silat class, and Alex was right, her mind did work better after she exercised. "Okay," she said. "I'll be back in about three hours."

He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips, then smiled at her. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."

The cab ride though London to the school in Clapham was an adventure in itself, and by the time Toni got there, it was growing dark. But she was fifteen minutes early, time enough to change and stretch before the class started.

Inside, eight or ten students were warming up, doing djurus and practicing two-person drills. Toni went to the bathroom, changed into sweatpants, wrestling shoes, a sports bra, and a T-shirt. She joined the other students and began doing leg stretches. She could still do the splits, front and side, but it took longer to warm into them than it had when she'd been fifteen. Leg flexibility helped — not so much in the Bukti, but it was a definite advantage in Serak. The basic turnaround required a drop from a high stance to a low one as you twisted, and the lower, the better. Tight hamstrings made that hard to do.

Guru Stewart arrived, already dressed to work out. He came over to Toni. "Glad to see you made it, Guru. I'm sure we have much to teach each other."

Toni smiled. "I don't know how much I can teach you, Guru, but I sure have a lot I can learn."

He returned her smile, and she felt a small sense of triumph at being able to make him grin.

Stewart walked to the front of the room and turned around. "All right, then. Shall we get started?"

Toni felt a rush of energy as she lined up to bow in. Until now, all of her teaching had been private. She'd never actually gone through a formal class from beginning to end. She was thrilled at the chance to do it.

Michaels pored over the small flatscreen's holoproj logs, scanning files related to the British investigation of the hacker's assault. It was tedious work, made worse because they spelled things wrong: labour, colour, like that. He kept mentally correcting the odd words when he came to them, and it slowed his scan speed.

His virgil announced an incoming call.

"Telecom from Angela Cooper," the virgil's voxchip said. He had switched the device from Jay's musical joke to vox, unable to listen to the fanfare after hearing that Jay was in the hospital.

"Connect," Michaels said.

"Commander Michaels? Angela Cooper here. I have some eyes-only material to add to your reading list. Mightn't I bring it round?"

"Sure. I'll be here for the rest of the evening."

"Shouldn't take that long. I'm in the lobby."

He grinned. "Come on up."

There was a tap at the hotel room's door two minutes later. Michaels opened it to see that Cooper could dress down as well as up. She wore a pair of snug-fitting blue jeans, oxblood Doc Martin boots, and a black scoop-necked blouse. She carried another flatscreen, but if she was armed, he couldn't see where she might be hiding a taser or a pistol in those clothes. Very attractive.

"Commander."

"Come in."

She did, and offered him the flatscreen. "Not much new here, but there are a couple of things we've gotten from the Pakistanis you might want to look at."

He took the flatscreen. "How goes the airline snafu?"

"Better. Most of the affected computers have been restored. You still wouldn't want to be flying into Rio tonight unless your pilot was very good indeed, but the situation is improved. They lost a freight jet at Auckland International, three men killed, but so far, no other crashes involving loss of life."

He nodded.

The MI-6 agent looked around. "Nice room. Ms. Fiorella about?"

"No, she's at a martial arts class."

"Ah. Remind me not to get on her bad side. Well, I should be going, I don't want to interrupt you in your work. We're very happy to have you aboard, sir."

"Call me Alex, please. All this commander and sir stuff is for the office."

"Right. Then you must call me Angela."

She glanced at her watch.

"Got a hot date?"

She blinked. "What? Oh, oh, no. I was just wondering if I had time to grab a bite to eat before I'm off to my sister's. I'm supposed to baby-sit with my niece this evening. She's eight."

Michaels smiled again. "About my daughter's age."

"I didn't realize you were married."

"Divorced, actually."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It was a relief. Except for Susan — that's my daughter — everybody is better off."

"I understand. I was married briefly myself. Awful experience, there toward the end. No children, fortunately, though I do enjoy them. Lucky for me, my sister's done all the work. Being Auntie Angie who gets to bring presents and spoil the child is ever so much more fun. How's the food here in the hotel, is it passable?"

"They make good roast beef and Rueben sandwiches in the pub," he said. He looked at the two flatscreens with the secret information. "I could use a break myself. Mind if I join you?"

"Not at all, please do."

She smiled and, for a second, Michaels felt a stab of discomfort. Toni was gone, and here he was about to dine with the beautiful Ms. Cooper.

Well, it wasn't as if he was about to dine on her. They were just having a sandwich, that was all. A man had to eat, didn't he?

Right. Sure.

He collected the second flatscreen. He wouldn't feel good about leaving them in the room, even though both were password protected. Given some of the villains Net Force had gone up against, that didn't seem very much protection.

Angela walked to the door, opened it, and smiled at him again. It seemed a warm smile to him.

Just a sandwich, that was all. He had Toni, a woman he loved, and that was all he needed, thank you very much.

Chapter 12

Peel stopped into a sandwich shop on Oxford Street, a place open at odd hours, so that you could eat lunch at midnight, if that was your pleasure. After army field rations, anything on relatively fresh bread stood well in comparison, and he was fond of the egg salad they made here.

He took his sandwich, a packet of crisps, and a can of cola to one of the small, circular tables by the window. As he ate, he watched the passersby, mostly civilians scurrying about on their business. The birds were nice, and high platform shoes were apparently in vogue again. Some of the teenage girls who clopped past the sandwich shop wore shoes with soles a good six inches thick. Amazing what people would do to themselves in the name of fashion.

Peel liked sex well enough, though he didn't feel much like spending time with the women afterward. Or before, actually. There were always girls of the evening about where soldiers spent off-duty time, and if one took the proper precautions against disease, one could enjoy as much female contact as one could afford. With his current job, he could afford as much as he could stand, which translated into sessions of an hour or so once or twice a week. Different bird each time, from assorted out-call services, so as not to establish a pattern that an enemy might track. A man who thought too much with his small head might well lose the larger head.

As he started on the second half of his sandwich, entertaining some vaguely erotic thoughts, he got an ugly surprise. Peter Bascomb-Coombs appeared next to him. The man smiled and said, "You don't mind if I have a seat, do you, Major?"

Without waiting for an answer, the scientist slid onto one of the high-backed chrome and plastic stools. He waved at the sandwich. "Any good?"

Well, here was a nasty coincidence. How had Bascomb-Coombs come to be here? He'd not been to this place as long as he had been under surveillance, some weeks now. Well, all right, Peel could brush it off as happenstance—

As if reading his mind, the man said, "No, I didn't just happen by, old chap. I came to see you."

"Really? About what?" Peel managed. He put the remainder of his sandwich down, his appetite suddenly gone. He wiped at his lips with a napkin. His sense of danger was piqued. How could the man have known he was here?

"About mutual benefit," Bascomb-Coombs said.

"I'm afraid I don't follow you."

"Come, come, Peel. Were you really taken in by my absent-minded scientist act? I suspect not. Just as I have been aware of your surveillance of my person since the beginning."

"Professor, I'm afraid I don't know what you are—" "Let's dispense with the fencing, shall we? How much?"

"Excuse me?" Peel stalled, trying to make sense of this suddenly too-knowing apparition. This was definitely a bad show.

"To have you on my team, Major. You and I both know that Goswell is off his trolley with his mad scheme to bring back the glory days of the Empire. He really imagines that setting the third-world wogs at each other's throats and stirring up the Americans and Chinese and Russians will somehow cause Britain to rule the waves again. Surely you cannot believe this?"

Peel was not stupid. The foundations of his job had just shifted, an unforeseen and formidable earthquake had rattled them, and things were, of a moment, changed. He was a pragmatist; best to see where this was leading. He said, "No, of course not."

Bascomb-Coombs smiled widely. "I thought you were smarter than that. You see, his lordship has me in this neat little pigeonhole, the idiot savant, the boy genius who forgets to do up his fly when he leaves the loo, and he needs to go on believing that. Right now, he controls my project, though I will remedy that soon enough. Sooner or later, your watch team might have gotten in my way, so I decided that it would be best to deal directly with you. Your men are loyal, are they not?"

"They are," Peel said.

"Good, good. So the only question is, what will it take for you to continue to tell Goswell what a half-wit I am when I am away from my computer? I shan't require the deception much longer, but the timing is critical just now."

Peel was a military officer; he had seen action. There were times when you had the luxury to sit and meditate, to plan your attacks and defenses, and there were times when you quickly aimed and fired your weapon and thought about it afterward. He made his decision on the spot: "A piece of your action," he said.

The scientist flashed another of his high-voltage smiles. "Ah, you are smarter than I imagined. You don't even know what my action is."

In for a penny, in for a pound. He said, "That hardly matters, does it? Goswell pays me a good salary, but my kind of work has a limited time span. I can't say I look forward to a small retirement cottage in Farnham or Dorking in twenty years, to spend the rest of my days puttering in the garden and pruning the roses. That's what Goswell will provide me. I expect you can do better, if I work for you?"

"Oh, yes, Major Peel. I can do much, much better than that. I can give you enough money to build a city of cottages, a different one for every day of your life. And an army of servants to prune the roses for you."

"You have my interest," Peel said. "Please, go on."

Ruzhyo sat on a bed in a Holiday Inn, watching the news on the television. There was nothing on it about him nor about the deaths of the two soldiers in the Nevada desert. This was as he expected. The organization responsible for the attack on his trailer would take pains to keep the failure covered up, at least from the public. In this way, the Americans were much like the Russians. What the public did not know could not cause a problem. There would be a search, of course, and they would want him alive so that he could suffer for his deeds. They had come for him because they had known who he was. Perhaps it would have been better had he shot the Net Force commander when he'd had the chance?

No, that would have been unprofessional by the time it came up. Plekhanov was caught, and eliminating the man who caught him would have served no purpose. The dead man would have been replaced quickly in any event, and his organization would have had more reason to hunt for a killer of one of their own than for one of the Russian's henchmen — who might not have even stayed in the United States.

So, once again, he was on the move, one step ahead of his enemies, who were surely on his trail. He felt tired.

But he also felt a grim kind of satisfaction. The old skills had not atrophied completely. When called upon, he still had some of his abilities. He was not as good as he had been five or even two years ago, but at his best, there were few who could stay with him. Even diminished, he was better than most. This was not egotistical but plain fact.

He sighed. He had several identities left to him, and money hidden in various places, both real and electronic. What was he to do now?

Maybe he should go home. To Chetsnya. To see the old villa once more before he died.

He had thought about doing that but never acted upon it. The American desert seemed to suit him more. But the end was growing near, he could feel that. While one place was as good as another when Death came, maybe there was something appropriate about meeting it where Anna had been claimed. And if it didn't matter, then the farm was as good a place as any, yes?

Home. He would go home. And if they found him there, then that would be the end of it.

"The moon?" Jay said. "You brought me to the moon?"

Saji laughed, something of a feat, given that there wasn't any atmosphere to breathe or to carry the sound here. Or there wouldn't be in RW. He said, "It doesn't get much quieter than here. I need you to be undistracted by sensory input. Would you rather a dark cave? Or an isolation tank?"

Jay shook his head. "No. I guess it doesn't matter."

"Precisely. Find a comfortable spot and sit, and we'll begin."

Jay shook his head. A comfortable spot on the surface of the moon? Sure.

But he walked through the gray dust, bounding into the air — well, no, he couldn't say air, could he? — with each step, until he came to a rocky outcrop that seemed remarkably chair-shaped. He sat.

Saji had vanished, but he left behind a Cheshire-cat smile that faded as he said, "Just remember what I told you."

Jay found himself alone, on the moon, and it was very, very quiet. The idea was for him to sit and let his thoughts run, then use the meditation technique Saji had taught him to control them. The technique sounded easy enough. All he had to do was to count his breaths. Easier than that, he had only to count the out breaths. One you got to ten, you started over again. How hard could it be?

Jay closed his eyes. One… two… three…

This felt really stupid. Couldn't Saji have come up with a better scenario than the fucking moon? It was so… oops. He was drifting. Saji had warned him about that. When a thought intruded, he was supposed to take a deep, cleansing breath, gently push it aside, then go back to the count. Okay. Okay. He could do that. Move, pal.

One… two… three… four… five…

How could this do anything? Just sitting and counting? What was the point? It didn't do anything that — aw, hell, there he went again.

One… two… three…

He saw the tiger, just a flash, and Jay stopped counting because the next out breath didn't happen. Jesus, the tiger!

He opened his eyes. Nothing to see but the dead, dry moonscape, nothing to hear except his own heartbeat. Which, he noticed, was speeding up. Damn. This was a lot harder than it sounded.

Ping! A single, crisp note played.

He had an incoming call, and it wouldn't have been put through unless it was one of three people: his mother, his father, or his boss.

The moonscape vanished. Jay sat on the couch in the hospital room. He reached for the com.

"How are you, Jay?" Michaels said.

"I've felt better, boss," came the reply. But it was slurred and almost unintelligible. The effects of the stroke.

Michaels had his visual mode on, and the hotel room's com gave him a decent-sized picture of Jay. He didn't look much different, maybe a little slackness on one side of his face was all.

"I'm sorry I didn't call sooner. Toni and I have been drafted by MI-6 to help out with this thing. You know about the other ops who were injured like you were?"

"I heard."

"You remember anything about your line of inquiry that might help?"

"Sorry, boss, no. I don't remember anything but a tiger." He shook his head. "Don't even remember for sure if it's connected to this."

"Okay, don't worry about it."

"I want to work on this, boss, but…"

"When you get better, if we haven't caught this guy yet. We've got everybody in the civilized world chasing him. We'll get him."

"I don't think so, boss. I've never… seen… anything… like it."

Just the strain of this short conversation was wearing him out, Michaels could see that. "Get some rest, Jay. We'll keep you posted."

He clicked off. Jesus, what a mess.

His virgil announced an incoming call. He looked at the ID. Cooper.

"Yes, hello?"

"Commander. Ah, Alex. A quick call to bring you up to speed. Our technical people have come up with a scenario that might explain how a VR headset could cause brain damage."

"Really?"

"Yes. Apparently, it is theoretically possible. I don't have the electronics or the mathematics to understand it, but the simple explanation is that certain solid-state components in the hardware might be programmed to act as capacitors. They could store the microelectric current like a camera's flash attachment does, then release it all at once. If, somehow, this discharge was focused and directed, it could indeed short out neural pathways. Theoretically, they say, because they can't do it."

"Is somebody that far ahead of the rest of the computer world?"

"Apparently so."

"I don't much like the sound of that."

"Nor do we. And we haven't a clue so far on how to trace whoever it is. We're hoping your expertise will help."

Michaels sighed. Yeah, right. His best expert had his brain fried by whoever it was they were hunting. That sure as hell didn't make things easier.

"Discom, then," Cooper said. "I'll see you at HQ later?"

"Yeah, I'll stop in."

After she had broken the connection, the virgil rang again. Lord, it was a parade. This time, it was Melissa Allison. Just what he needed.

"Commander."

"Director."

"Anything to report?"

Well, yes, we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground, as far as all this goes. But he said, "No, ma'am, nothing substantial yet. MI-5 and -6 have made their systems available, and we are getting up to speed."

"Keep me informed of your progress."

"Of course."

He put the virgil back into its charger as the bathroom door opened and Toni, wrapped in a towel, came out in a cloud of vapor from her shower. "Did I hear the phone ring?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. He looked at her, smiled. "But let's talk about that after."

She smiled back at him. Undid the towel and dropped it. "After what?"

"Come here."

"What is the magic word?"

"Come here, quick!"

She laughed.

Once she was close enough to grab, he did, and whatever thoughts he might have had for the next few minutes were short-circuited well shy of his brain.

Chapter 13

The obstacle course wasn't busy, and after a hundred crunches, fifty push-ups, and a dozen chins at the beginning, John Howard wasn't even close to burning off his frustration, but he didn't really feel like running the course. He was too tight, too pissed off, too… something. He wanted to hit somebody, hit them hard enough to knock their teeth out, spray blood in all directions, and watch them fall, preferably onto something sharp. It didn't help that who he was the maddest at was himself. He had screwed up, big time, and that promotion he had allowed himself to dream about was likely to be rescinded before he ever officially saw it.

Too bad, but when it got right down to it, that didn't matter as much as the two dead soldiers. Losing men in battle, in a firefight, that was one thing. Losing them in a supposedly secure area to a single man who made you look stupid, that galled. Losing them at all…

So he stood there, watching the odd FBI trainee or Marine pass him for the obstacle course, feeling impotent.

So far, there hadn't been squat on Ruzhyo since he'd disappeared. Oh, yeah, they found the truck, in front of a supermarket in Vegas, windows rolled down, keys in the ignition. He could be anywhere in the country by now, hell, anywhere on the planet. Net Force had the best computers crunching all flight information, train and bus schedules, rental cars, automobile and motorcycle sales, even car thefts in and around Las Vegas, but so far they hadn't come up with anything to match the fugitive's profile.

He wanted this guy, wanted him as bad as anything he had wanted in a long time. If he found out where he was, Howard was going to hop on a plane, officially or unofficially, whatever it took, and go get the sucker.

"Colonel?"

He shook himself from the red fog he'd allowed to envelop him and turned. Julio.

"Got something you might find interesting."

He was grinning.

Damn. Good news, at last.

The news on the telly was, as it always seemed to be these days, disgusting. The American President was going on about "moral fiber," a subject about which he certainly knew little, if anything. Presidents in the U.S. were notorious for their lack of self-control, from Warren G. Harding to Kennedy to Clinton. The idea that the leader of a country with such slipshod spiritual and moral values could hold forth on how anybody should behave was patently ridiculous. Especially when the leader himself was known to have the sexual ethics of a mink. The current U.S. President was as bad as any — he just hadn't been found out yet.

Goswell nodded at the telly. Well, yes, he would have to do something about that, now wouldn't he? He would put in a call to his man, see if there wasn't some way to use the new toy to find out what the President had been up to. If records existed in a computer anywhere — and surely they must — the scientist could get them. Give the Americans another scandal to drool over, and get the bastard so busy defending his so-called honor that he wouldn't have time to meddle elsewhere.

Meanwhile, he had another call to make. "Applewhite?"

The butler appeared next to him. "Milord?"

"A telephone, please. And one with a dial, if you would."

"Yes, milord."

The butler went to fetch the telephone. Goswell hated to do such business, but it was the nature of reality that a man was sometimes forced to do things he would rather not if he was to stay afloat in stormy seas.

Applewhite returned with the phone. It looked like one of the old Bakelite rotary dial models he had used as a boy, but it was just a replica. Inside, it was full of electronics as modern as any, and there was no thick black cord connecting it to anything. It was a wireless model.

As he took the phone, he said, "Any sign of that rabbit?"

"Cook said she saw him when she went to the garden this morning, milord."

"Ah, well. Fetch me my shotgun, then. We'll just go and see if we can't give the little bugger something to think about."

"Yes, milord."

As the man trundled off to the lockbox where the guns were kept, Goswell dialed the number for the man he wished to reach. It rang once on the other end, and the voice that answered was gruff. The words came out as an uneducated-sounding, "Whot's it, then?"

"Goswell here. You have some information for me?"

"Roight, Guv, I 'ave."

"The usual place, then. Say… seven?"

"Gawt it."

Goswell cradled the phone's receiver, sighed, and shook his head. A pity to have to deal with such men, but this wasn't something that could be delegated.

Applewhite returned, the open shotgun cradled in one arm, with a pair of the custom-made brass and waxed green cardboard shells in hand. Two shots was all Goswell allowed himself per adventure. If he missed, then the rabbit would live to raid the garden another day. It was only fair.

The gun was a handmade Rigby Bros. fowling piece, but certainly suitable for bunnies, a sixteen-gauge side-by-side double with Damascus-twist barrels. The water-patterned steel was beautiful, but not up to modern ammunition, so he had his gunsmith make loads that the weapon could digest without blowing apart. They produced quite the smelly smoke, the shells did, when touched off. The smith, George Walker, said he could substitute Pyrodex for the black powder he used, and the smoke would be lessened, but Goswell didn't care all that much. A couple of blasts of #8 birdshot would take Mr. Rabbit right out of the game — if he could but draw a bead on him. That was the trick, for the rabbit seemed to know when Goswell was armed and when he was not.

Applewhite held out a pair of earmuffs. Goswell glared at the butler.

"The doctor insists, milord."

Goswell nodded. "All right, give me the blasted things." But secretly, he approved of the earmuffs. These were electronic hearing protectors, produced by one of Goswell's own companies in France — devil take the Frogs — and he had to admit they were useful devices. A circuit in the headset sensed incoming noise and immediately shut it out, reducing the loud blast to a small pop. However, when they were not picking up explosions, the muffs actually amplified regular sounds, so that one could hear better than normal. Truth be known, Goswell's hearing was not what it had been, and he was seriously considering the implants that would bring back his ability to pick up normal conversation, which had faded appreciably. The implants were apparently good for five or six years, using microbatteries that were somehow recharged by the vibrations of sound upon them. He knew a few chaps and one old lady who had undergone the surgical procedure, and all of them had been most satisfied with the results. Perhaps he would have it done. He had already had the laser surgery on his eyes, didn't even need his reading glasses unless he was very tired. It was a mixed blessing, technology, but now and again it did offer something worthwhile.

"After I pot this rabbit, have Stephens bring the car round. I'll be going to the club."

"Yes, milord. Good hunting."

Goswell smiled. "Thank, you, Applewhite. I will get the rascal, indeed I will!"

Peel drove toward the meeting place where Bascomb-Coombs had directed him, still somewhat unsettled by this new twist in his fortunes. And fortune was certainly smiling upon him. Bascomb-Coombs had caused this morning a new account to be opened at an Indonesian bank, a numbered account upon which Peel could draw, and therein was the sum in Indonesian rupias equivalent to one million euros.

Just like that, Peel had become a millionaire, and the promise was for much more if he performed his new duties adequately.

The small office suite was off Old Kent Road, not far from the old South Eastern Gas Works. Not a place Peel would have picked, but perhaps that was just as well, for none of Peel's investigations had spotted the building.

He turned into the car park, shut the engine off, and walked to the two-story, squarish gray block. The windows were barred, and a guard sat behind a desk just inside the lobby. The guard checked a computer screen, matched the name and face on it to Peel's, and buzzed him through a locked door to a stair.

Peel climbed quickly, reached the second floor, and turned down the hall toward the office at the end. As he passed other offices, some with windows in their doors, he observed that they all appeared to be quite empty.

The last door on the right was unlocked, and he opened it and stepped inside.

"Ah, Major, right on time. I appreciate that. Come in, come in, let me show you around."

There didn't appear to be much to see. In one corner was a computer desk, a holoprojector and workstation upon it and a leather rolling chair in front of it. A small fridge and stove sat to one side, and there was a fold-out couch next to that. A sign on a door past the couch identified it as a loo.

Peel raised one eyebrow, as if to say, Show me what, sir?

Bascomb-Coombs smiled. "Doesn't look like much, does it? But the real works are elsewhere, of course, at Lord Goswell's computer facility in Chelmsford. We are hooked into it telephonically, and to answer your question, yes, quite undetectably. I can do from here what I can do at Chelmsford, and nobody will be the wiser."

"If you'll excuse my ignorance, Mr. Bascomb-Coombs, just what is it exactly that you do? I mean, I know about the device, what Goswell has told me of it, and I have seen the results, which are certainly quite impressive, but I'm not up to speed on how it works exactly."

The scientist laughed. "And I doubt seriously I could explain it to you. Turner's Dictum is that "A thing can be told simply if the teller understands it properly," but I'm not sure I entirely understand it myself. And please do not take offense, but I doubt that you have the mathematics and physics to comprehend it if I did have it all. At this stage, my computer is rather like a kitchen match. I can use it to light a fire handily, but I'm not totally conversant with the chemical processes that make it work."

He smiled, and Peel smiled back. Had the man just called him stupid?

"I'll give you a basic lesson, if you want. You are somewhat familiar with ordinary computers?"

"Somewhat."

"Then you know that most computers are Turing engines that use Boolean logic based on binary operations. You have zeros and ones — quantum bits of information called Qubits — and these are the only choices. It is either one or zero, period. In a quantum computer, however, one can get superposition of both at the same time. It doesn't seem reasonable on the face of it, but in quantum parallelism one can use all the possible values of all input registers simultaneously."

Peel nodded, as if he had a fucking clue what the man was talking about.

Bascomb-Coombs went on: "Using Shor's quantum factorization algorithm, one can see that factoring a large number can be done by a QC — quantum computer — in a very small fraction of the time the same number would take using ordinary hardware. A problem that a SuperCray might labor over for a few million years can be done in seconds by my QC. So for a practical matter like code breaking, the QC is vastly superior."

Peel nodded. "If so, why isn't everybody using these QCs?"

Bascomb-Coombs laughed again. "Oh, they would much like to! But it isn't something one whips up in an old mayonnaise jar out in the woodshed. The problem is that the coherent state of a QC is usually destroyed as soon as it is affected by the surrounding environment. What this means is, as soon as you turn it on and try to access it, you destroy it. A bit of a trick to get around that. They've tried all kinds of things over the years: lasers, photon excitation, ion traps, optical traps, NMR, polarization, and even Bulk Spin-Resonance-quantum tea leaves, this last.

"Wineland and Monroe worked out the single quantum gate by trapping beryllium ions. Kimble and Turch polarized photons and did the same thing. NTC had some early success with nuclear magnetic resonance, and Chuang and Gershenfeld applied Grover's algorithm for a 2Q model, using the carbon and hydrogen atoms in a chloroform molecule. But the problem has always been multiplicity and stability. Until my unit."

"How did you manage that, if it is so hard?"

"Because I am smarter than they are," he said. It didn't sound like bragging and, given the results, apparently it wasn't.

"I lost you back when I said 'Qubits,' didn't I?"

"Before that, I'm afraid," Peel admitted.

Bascomb-Coombs smiled. "Don't feel bad, Major. There aren't a handful of physicists in the world who would understand how I've done what I've done, even with the working model in front of them. Your talents lie elsewhere. I shouldn't want to try and knock you about in a dark alley nor go against you on a battlefield."

Peel acknowledged the compliment with a nod. "Quite."

"Anyway, what it all means is that I've got a computer that can do wondrous things, and picking locks is at the top of its list. Short of pulling the plug and removing it from any incoming communications, there isn't a computer on earth I can't break into. Money means nothing when you can enter any vault at will. Military secrets are at our beck. Nobody can hide anything from us."

"Really? Then why aren't you king of the world?"

The man laughed yet again. "I like you, Peel, you are so refreshing after years of mealy-mouthed scientific types. The simple answer is, the computer isn't perfect yet. It has a few glitches, and now and again, it goes down. Somewhere about half the time I use it, actually. So I am loath to waste my up time on frivolous things like money and power — at least until I get it more stable. That's where I'm spending my energies, on the system. Because Goswell owns the physical unit and has it quite well guarded, I can't turn down his requests just yet. But the time is coming. And I'll need men with your skills with me."

Peel thought about the million euros in the Indonesian bank. He was already richer than he'd ever expected. His father, title notwithstanding, had been a land-poor duffer who'd lost even that before he died. A million euros was nothing to sniff at, but if he stuck with this strange character, the chance of more was distinctly possible.

"I am at your service, Mr. Bascomb-Coombs."

"Oh, do call me Peter, Terrance. I'm sure we're going to get along just fine."

Chapter 14

Ruzhyo rode the underground train through the SeaTac airport toward his gate. He was booked on a British Airways 747 to London. He had taken a bus from Mississippi to New Orleans, a Stretch-727 from there to Portland, and a Dash 8 from there to here. Had anybody been able to follow him to Mississippi, they would have seen a similar travel pattern from Las Vegas to Jackson: He had rented a car and driven to Oklahoma City, then caught the first of three short commercial flights south-eastward from there. A pursuer might have expected him to continue east or south, to Miami, say, and instead, he had reversed his direction. Once in London, he would fly to Spain or Italy, from there to India or Russia, and from there, home.

If you were being chased, it was not wise to run in a straight line, especially if the hounds were faster than you.

The train was full, and when it stopped again to load more passengers, Ruzhyo got up from his seat and offered it to a young and very pregnant woman carrying two bags. He and Anna had wanted children, but that was not to be.

The woman thanked him and sat. He held onto a railing and watched the wall pass in front of the windows.

The train stopped, the passengers alighted, and Ruzhyo headed for his gate. He was hours early, but he had nowhere else he wanted to go. He would find a sandwich shop; a bathroom to attend to his needs; a place to sit and perhaps to sleep. In the military, one learned to sleep whenever the opportunity arose, and sleeping in a comfortable chair was easy.

The flight to Heathrow was a direct one, only nine or ten hours, and he was booked in the center cabin, as would be a man traveling on business. He wore a medium-price suit, a pale blue shirt and tie, and carried a briefcase full of magazines and blank paper to augment the image. He was just another corporate wheel in the machine, nobody to look twice at.

British Airways wasn't as bad as some, certainly much better than any of the Russian or Chinese internal airlines. His last flight on the English carrier had been dull enough, save for the touchdown. The big jet hit the runway hard enough to deploy the oxygen masks and to shower passengers with luggage from the overhead bins. No one had been hurt, but it had been something of a surprise. Perhaps they had been letting the stewardess practice her landings. Or maybe the pilot had fallen asleep.

He mentally shrugged. He had hit harder. Once, during a monsoon, the JAL flight he was on had landed in Tokyo hard enough to collapse the nose gear, sending a shower of sparks past the passengers' windows despite the wet pavement. Once, on a flight to Moscow, the vintage turboprop Russian plane upon which he had been traveling had landed safely but hit a refueling truck as it taxied to the gate, killing the driver and throwing to the floor half a dozen passengers in too much of a hurry who had unbuckled and left their seats. Bones had been broken on that one. And once, after he had alighted from a small Cessna at a remote field in Chetsnya, the little craft had taxied away toward the runway to depart, rolled over a land mine sixty meters away, and had been blown to pieces.

He had ceased to worry about such things long ago. If your number was up, then it was up. Until then, the old saw was true: Any landing you could walk away from was a good landing.

A little pub in the terminal had Rueben sandwiches on the menu, and he ordered one and a beer. The television set was on, a sports channel. Hideously ugly women, puffed up like human toads and stained dark brown, paraded back and forth on a stage, flexing their muscles. They looked like men in bikinis. Backstage, one of the women was interviewed, and when she spoke, her voice was deeper than an operatic bass singer's.

Amazing what people would do to themselves. Ruzhyo had once trained briefly with Russian Olympic track athletes, and he knew something of the chemicals they used to enhance their performances. The male steroids these women bodybuilders took left them with permanent changes in their bodies: deep voices, acne, hairy faces and bodies, and enlarged sexual organs. It was fine to pump up when one was twenty-five to stand on a stage, but what would these poor women look like at fifty or sixty? He shook his head. No eye for the future.

"Jesus, would you turn that shit off?" one of the other bar patrons said to the man behind the counter. Several of the other men raised their glasses in support. The counterman shrugged and changed the channel.

Ruzhyo ate his sandwich and drank his beer.

MI-6 had given Alex and Toni a fair-sized office with full access to their computer systems. Well, at least insofar as this particular problem went. Toni had come across plenty of off-limits files.

Alex was down the hall, conferring with Hamilton. Toni was alone in the office, cross-referencing airline computer data, when Angela Cooper tapped at the open door.

"Come in," Toni said.

"Sorry to bother you, Ms. Fiorella, but Alex wonders if you might join him and the director-general for a word?"

Alex? She was calling him Alex?

"Sure," Toni said. She logged out of the workstation. Cooper stood there waiting, smiling, but looking somehow impatient.

"This way, please."

Toni felt short and dumpy next to the blonde, who wore a dark green suit with the skirt hemmed a couple of inches too high above her knees, and sensible pumps with two-inch heels. She had good legs though, and maybe if Toni were tall and leggy, she'd showcase them, too, instead of wearing a plain blue silk blouse, jeans, and walking shoes. Well, she hadn't packed for work, had she? After the conference, at which she'd worn both suits she'd brought and then sent them to the cleaners, pretty much all she had in the way of clothes were casual things. It was supposed to be a vacation, wasn't it? But she'd call the cleaners and get her work clothes back. She wasn't going to let Ms. Cooper here make her look any worse than she had to look.

"Sorry about interrupting your vacation this way."

Toni pulled her thoughts away from clothes and back to the moment. "What? Oh, well, it's not your fault. We got to see a little of your country anyhow."

"Different than the States, isn't it?"

"You've been to the U.S.?"

"Oh, yes, of course. A few work trips. And I spent a summer at UCLA back when I was a student. Lovely climate, I got my first real tan there."

I bet you did. Toni imagined Cooper in a bikini. She would be striking. The line of men hitting on her would form quickly in the SoCal sunshine. She'd have to carry a stick to keep them off — unless she wanted the attention, and probably she did. She was the type.

"Alex says you are from the Bronx?"

Oh, did he? What was Alex doing telling her that? "Yes. I'm afraid New York isn't anything like California."

"I spent a week in Manhattan once, late in August. The heat and humidity were fairly awful."

"It's worse in July."

Ten paces went by without any more conversation. The silence was just getting awkward when Cooper said, "I understand that Alex is divorced and has a daughter. Have you met her — the daughter?"

Jesus, what was Alex doing, telling her stuff like this? And when had he had a chance to tell it? Next thing you knew, he'd be giving this woman pictures of him and Toni in bed together! She said, "No, I haven't met her. Talked to her on the com a few times. Seen pictures of her. She lives with her mother in Idaho."

"That's out West, isn't it?"

"Yes. Out West."

"Ah, well, here we are, then." She indicated the door with one hand.

"You aren't coming in?"

"Afraid not, other duties. I'll see you later."

Cooper turned and left, a hint of a sway in her hips as she walked.

The bitch.

Inside, Alex stood next to a table with Hamilton, both of them examining hardcopy photographs under a bright light. Alex looked up at her. He didn't smile. "Toni. Come check this out."

She moved to stand next to him. The pictures were spysat overflies of some kind of military installation, computer-augmented for color and dimension. There was what appeared to be a pair of ICBMs on railcar launchers at one end of the complex. "What am I looking at?"

Hamilton said, "This is the experimental rocket station in Xinghua, near the coast of the East China Sea. The Chinese have been developing a new long-range nuclear missile here." He tapped the ICBM in the photograph. "Last evening, a computer put two of the working prototypes on alert and began a ninety-minute countdown to launch. The missiles were aimed at Tokyo."

"Lord!" Toni said.

"Precisely. The computer was locked out, they were unable to shut it down. Fortunately, both warheads were dummies, and also fortunately, technicians were able to abort the launches manually. The Chinese, while not normally forthcoming about such things, are terrified. Someone bypassed their computer safeguards and codes and lit the fuses from outside. U.S. spysats that keep the station under observation saw the prelaunch movements, and the U.S. military scrambled stealth fighter-bombers from their base on the South Korean island of Cheju-do. If the Chinese missiles had lifted, the stealth jets would have tried to shoot them down, and they would very likely have bombed the station to prevent any further launches."

Toni stared at Alex. He looked grim.

"Even without the nuclear payload, a pair of rocks that big dropping into the middle of downtown Tokyo would have caused considerable damage," Alex said.

"And it's our airline hacker?" Toni said.

"Or somebody just like him. I can't believe there are two of them."

Toni shook her head.

"We've got to run this guy down, fast. And our best tracker, Jay, is out of commission."

"Never rains but it pours, eh?" Hamilton said.

Toni looked at the man, then back at Alex. Bad, this was definitely bad.

Tyrone had figured out that if he got to the soccer field immediately after his school shift ended, the field would be empty for forty minutes before the next shift arrived. Forty minutes was plenty of time to get ten or fifteen good throws in.

He stood near the middle of the field, testing the wind with a wet fingertip. There was a pretty good breeze coming in from the north, and he decided to tape a couple of pennies to his MTA boomerang to keep it from getting wind-whipped. That took only a minute, then he was ready.

He angled himself against the wind, took a couple of deep breaths, and shook out his shoulder to loosen the muscle. He'd been considering lifting weights. The top throwers were all in good shape, and he could use a little more power in his arms. The balance was tricky. If you threw too soft, you didn't get any time aloft, and if you threw too hard, you could get a fast nosedive. But there were times when you needed a little more strength, like now, when the wind was gusting, and at his size, Tyrone didn't have any extra muscle. He didn't need to be Hercules or anything, but a little more mass wouldn't hurt.

He made his first throw, to check the angle of the blades and see how the taped coins balanced. The Indian Ocean glowed in a red blur as it spun but wobbled off-center and augured in too fast. He retrieved the 'rang and adjusted the angle on the blades by carefully bending them up. He moved the coin on the long arm in toward the angle a few millimeters, retaped it, then tried another throw.

Better, but still off a hair. Well, he could spend all day adjusting the thing, especially in gusty conditions, and it was close enough for practice.

He was on his seventh toss, having finally gotten above a minute for flights, which was about as good as he expected in the wind, when he heard Nadine yell at him.

"Yo, Ty!"

She came across the field, shrugged out of her backpack, and removed from it her own MTA, a long, L-shaped blue and white striped model. It was a Quark Synlin. He'd never seen one up close, but he'd seen holos, and he saw a couple at the tourney, from a distance, so he recognized it right off.

"Man, how'd you come by that? I thought Quark quit the business."

"He did, but there are a few still for sale. My mother told me if I could show her I could handle the top-of-the-line 'rang, she'd loan me the money for it. When I won the contest, she figured I was ready. It came air express this morning." She held it out. Tyrone took it from her as if it was a live baby, holding it carefully.

"How does it throw?"

"Dunno, I haven't had a chance yet. Why don't you give it a try?"

He blinked at her. "You need to be first, it's yours."

"No, go ahead. You're already warmed up."

"Yeah?"

"Sure."

He wet his finger, checked the wind.

She said, "Medium-hard, angle up fifty, don't lay over. Better to over-vertical. Five to ten into the wind."

He nodded. Set his stance. Took a good breath, reared back, and made the toss.

The big Quark zipped out about fifty meters before it started to make its turn, gained height — a lot of height, thirty, thirty-five meters — then started to shift from perp to flat. It bounced a couple of times on an updraft.

"Man, look at that!"

It was a beautiful flight, wind and all. It just seemed to hang there forever, and it finally came down within twenty meters of where he'd made the throw, slightly down field. He did an easy slap catch.

Tyrone didn't have his stopwatch, but Nadine had hers. "Two minutes fifty-one," she said. "Not bad."

"Yeah not bad! That beats my PR!" With that time, he would have beaten her at the tourney, too. Damn!

He looked at the boomerang, then smiled at Nadine. "Thanks." He handed it back to her. "Your turn. We've got like twenty minutes before the soccer geeks run us off."

"Time enough for two throws, you think?"

"You wish. " They both laughed.

Nadine was all right. Especially for a girl.

Chapter 15

Jay Gridley stood on a patch of high desert listening to the silence among the rocks and scrub growth. The sun was a blinding mallet, hammering everything beneath it into the dead ground. It looked like the middle of nowhere, and if you headed directly east, west, or south, you'd leave the U.S. and hit Mexico; from here, the nearest border was only a mile or three away.

Next to him, Saji stood, looking much more like a Native American than a Tibetan. He wore faded blue jeans, cowboy boots, a long-sleeved work shirt, and a white ten-gallon hat with a rattlesnake skin band around it.

"Smell the water?" Saji said.

Jay, dressed much like Saji, but with a shadier, wide-brimmed Mexican sombrero, shook his head. "All I smell is desert. Dust, sand, and baked rocks, that's it."

Indeed, every step they took kicked up more reddish brown dust, fine as talcum powder. It coated his boots and clothes, stung his eyes and nose, and made breathing hard. There was no wind, so at least the dust settled quickly. A very realistic scenario, and it was Saji's. Something like this was still beyond Jay's capabilities.

"Okay, let's see if we can cut some sign."

Jay shook his head. "How did you learn all this tracking stuff?"

Saji smiled his idiot's grin. "Jerry Pierce, a Navajo buddy of mine, is a Son of the Shadow Wolves. Tracker for the Border Patrol. He taught me about this, I taught him about the Middle Way."

"A Navajo Buddhist?"

"Why not? Buddhism doesn't get in the way of most other religious beliefs, at least not the ones that aren't militantly monotheistic. Come on."

The two of them walked carefully over the sandy ground. After a few yards, Saji said, "Stop. You see it?"

They were maybe ten feet from the edge of a steep drop-off, a cliff that went down sixty, seventy feet. "See what? The end of the world?"

"Nothing quite so dramatic. Right there in front of you."

Jay strained his eyes, staring at the ground. Here were three things: hardpan dirt, a single broken blade of pale green grass, and a weathered, dusty, reddish rock. The ground here wouldn't hold a track. "I don't see anything."

"Not anything?"

"Okay, fine, I see something. There's a patch of hard dirt, a rock, a piece of dead grass. That's it."

"Look around. Any other vegetation?"

Jay raised from his crouch, glanced at the area around him. "There's something looks like a creosote bush about ten yards that way." He moved toward the cliff edge, peered over it. Nothing growing down that way. "Nothing close. There's a big cactus way the hell over there. It's desolation row here."

"Okay, think about that for a minute."

"No offense, Saji, but if I could think for more than thirty seconds without going blank-stupid, I wouldn't need you!"

"Close your eyes, count your breath."

Jay sighed. He did as he was told. One… two… three… what… did… I… see…?

He opened his eyes. "The grass."

Saji nodded. "What about it?"

"It doesn't belong here. How did it get here? There's nothing else around like it."

"Good. Could it have blown here?"

Jay shook his head. "No wind. And if it had been here very long, it would have been dry as a bleached bone, but it's still green."

"Which means?"

"Something put it there. Maybe it fell out of a shoe or was stuck to somebody's pants leg."

"Very good. Now what?"

Jay considered it. Saji had told him, but he couldn't remember it. Okay, think logically, Jay. It was hard, but it wasn't like he had to do any major programming, just take the next small step. Which would be…?

"Spiral out, look for tracks in any dirt that will take them?"

"Good. Let's see it. Careful — you don't want to obliterate any sign."

Jay spiraled out from the grass, moving slowly, looking for tracks. He couldn't spot any for fifty feet in a circle around it. He shook his head. "No tracks."

"You sure?"

"Hell, yes, I'm sure!"

Saji waited for a few seconds.

"Sorry. I'm on edge."

"No problem. Look over here." Saji led Jay to a patch of dust, pointed at it. "There."

"Come on. That dirt is perfectly smooth, not a mark on it, you can't tell me you see a track there!"

"Carpet People," Saji said.

"Come again?"

"They wear pieces of cut carpet on their feet, booties over their shoes, that don't leave tracks. You see a perfectly smooth spot in the desert, it's wrong. Look there, next to it. See the wind riffles? The rain pocks? The way the dust is uneven, here and here? Now look back at that spot, there."

Jay looked. Yes. The dust was perfectly smooth.

"Get down to ground level, get the sun to the side."

Jay did. Yes, he could see a slight edge around the smooth spot, a rough oval shape. "I see it!"

"Sometimes, what you have to look for is the absence of something that should be there. Sometimes it will be very subtle, like this no-print footprint. Our quarry passed this way, heading north, staying close to the cliff edge. A man tracking him on horseback wouldn't get too close to the drop-off, even if the horse would let him. That big cactus you mentioned, way the hell over there?"

"Yeah."

"I bet he stopped there to rest in the shade."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"It's to the north. There's no shade behind us for miles. After walking out here in the hot sun for a couple of hours, your half-cooked feet wrapped in carpet booties over shoes, moving slow so as not to disturb the dust, wouldn't you stop in the shade to take a drink?"

Saji started walking briskly toward the barrel cactus.

"Uh, Saji? Don't we need to be careful of stepping on sign?"

"Nope. If he went to the cactus, we don't need to know how he got there. He didn't go over the edge, or we'd see the buzzards circling his body. He didn't come back our way. He went to the cactus. We'll pick up his trail there."

"Right," Jay said. "You're the boss."

"No, Jay, you are the boss. I'm just a guide."

He moved off. Jay followed him.

John Howard stood staring in the Holiday Inn room where Mikhayl Ruzhyo had spent the night before. The maid hadn't cleaned the room yet; Ruzhyo had paid for two nights and put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door before he left. Even so, the room hardly seemed to have been occupied. The bed was made, the single used towel had been refolded and put on top of the unused ones. A paper-wrapped glass in the bathroom had been rinsed clean, dried, and put back where it came from. And if he had used the crapper, the man had even folded a new point on the remainder of the toilet paper roll when he was done.

"No-impact camper," Fernandez said. "Wish my bride was so tidy."

Howard chewed at his lip. "I suppose it was too much to hope he'd leave a map with a destination circled, along with his airline reservation number and flight times."

"We'll get him, Colonel. We traced him this far, we'll pick up his trail from here, too. Looks as if he is heading east."

"Maybe."

"Maybe he is heading east, or maybe we'll get him?"

"Both."

Peel stood outside the old church that was now his office, staring at Lord Goswell, who was still traipsing around carrying that ancient shotgun, trying to find one of the rabbits that had been raiding his garden.

The old boy considered himself quite the hunter. Peel had heard his old hunting stories a dozen times. Back in the early sixties, when such things were still routinely done, Goswell had gone on safari to Africa. There, he had taken an elephant, a lion, and a leopard, along with assorted wildebeests and springbok and other smaller game animals. Of course, his lordship's eyes and ears had been a lot sharper and younger fifty years ago, and he'd had an army of bearers to carry his gear, not to mention a local white hunter to find his targets. With that kind of stalk, one just showed up and pulled the trigger when told, and if one missed the shot, the white hunter would save one's arse. Hardly the same as tracking a wounded cape buffalo into a bamboo thicket alone, was it?

Just at the moment, the old boy, who was half deaf and blind, was probably as much threat to his own feet as he was to any lurking rabbits. He had been hunting bunnies on and off for months, and while he had fouled the air numerous times with that black-powder cannon of his, he had yet to hit anything other than the ground — or once, the side of the tool shed.

Goswell wasn't an awful man, merely a prime example of his class. Born rich, educated at the best schools, with all the right connections, the man had never had to want for anything. He'd married well, had the usual half-witted, inbred children, who'd also married well. One or the other of them would come to call now and then, more often since their mother had died a few years back. Even a couple of the grandchildren came round to see the old boy, and he doted on them, of course. It was true what they said; the rich were different, especially the old-money rich. They expected certain things as their due, never considered otherwise.

The old man whipped the shotgun up, aimed — but held his fire. Lowered the weapon and muttered to himself.

Peel grinned. Well, he could find out how it felt to be rich. He had a million in the bank. He could quit right now, invest the money conservatively, and live very comfortably off the interest for the rest of his life without ever touching the principal. There was security, especially for a man who had always expected to die with his boots on. But he could do even better by simply continuing on, working for Goswell. Everything the same, except that his reports about Bascomb-Coombs would change somewhat. His men would continue to follow the computer expert, save at certain specified times. One watcher would be taken off, thinking another would replace him, only that wouldn't happen. There would be a gap, as long as Bascomb-Coombs needed, and Peel would fill it in when he wrote up the reports. Not bad work for a million, altering a few schedules.

The old man wandered around the corner out of sight and, as he did, Peel reflected that the big sound-suppressor headphones made Goswell look rather like some kind of geriatric alien.

Peel glanced at his watch. About time for his men to check in.

Of course, the deal with the Jew scientist would eventually involve more than just keeping his lordship in the dark; he knew that. The other shoe would drop, and it would certainly involve work somewhat more strenuous than altering a computer log. And while Bascomb-Coombs seemed convinced of his invincibility when it came to his Qubits and all this quantum nonsense, if somebody kicked in the door and started shooting, it would take a man who knew how to shoot back to save his brilliant arse.

Well, Peel had done that for a long time, first for the queen, then her duffer son the king, and for a lot less money than he was getting now—

A bomb went off. Half a second later, another blast followed.

Peel dropped into a gunfighter's crouch, looking for danger, his hand automatically darting to his pistol. He relaxed when he saw the greasy white cloud of smoke swirl past, and heard the old man cursing. "Bastard! You filthy, thieving bastard!"

Peel grinned. Missed another one. He straightened, shot his cuffs, and went to make sure the old man was all right. Just because he was betraying Goswell's trust didn't mean he shouldn't be civilized.

Chapter 16

Michaels decided to accept Toni's invitation and go along to the silat class. He ought to work out, he'd been neglecting his practice the last few days, and God only knew when they'd get home and back into a normal routine. So far, they had zip on this new threat. He'd probably feel a lot better if he exercised, developed a good sweat.

"You've got the long stare," Toni said.

She sat in the seat across from him in the cab, and he smiled reflexively at her. "Sorry. I spent most of the afternoon counting figurative paper clips. I'm not any closer to this guy than I was before. I feel stupid."

"Why do you feel as if you personally are responsible for catching the mad hacker? Dozens of governmental agencies around the world are chasing him, and none of them are any further along than we are."

"Yeah, but I sit at the top of the pyramid in the can-do U.S. of A. Nobody is eyeballing the Portuguese or the Tasmanians and expecting them to track this guy down. We're the only superpower left."

"Hi ho, Silver!"

He blinked at her. "Huh?"

"How the Lone Ranger got his name. Tonto nursed him back to health after the Butch Cavendish gang am-bushed the ranger troop. He came to, asked about the others. Tonto said, 'Him dead, all dead. You… only ranger left. You… lone ranger.' "

"Really?"

"Truth. You know what it says on the barrel of the Cisco Kid's gun?"

He blinked at her. "What?"

" 'Don't make me hurt you.' "

He smiled at her. "How do you know stuff like that?"

"A misspent youth. Older brothers who collected everything from cars to old 78 rpm vinyl records. I can tell you about Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autrey, if you want. Want to know about Red Ryder's sidekick?"

"Maybe not," he said.

"You don't want to hear about Li'l Beaver?" She batted her eyes at him and smiled.

"Well… yeah. But… not in front of the cabbie."

They both laughed.

The silat school was a dump, in a ratty neighborhood that made Michaels wish he had brought his taser. It was clean enough inside, though, and the students were polite when Toni introduced him.

The instructor, Carl Stewart, arrived, and Michaels met him, too. Seemed like a nice guy, a few years older than Michaels, in pretty good shape. A little taller, a little grayer, a little wider across the shoulders and thicker through the arms. He wore bifocal aviator glasses, and Michaels wondered why he wasn't wearing contacts or droptacs instead.

"Toni tells me you've begun studying silat, " Stewart said. "Are you going to join the class this evening?"

"If that would be all right, yes."

"Certainly." He smiled at Toni, she smiled right back, and Michaels felt a little pang of… something.

Jealousy? No, of course not. He trusted Toni.

The class began, and Michaels dutifully went up and down the floor practicing the two djurus he had learned. He stole quick glances at Toni, saw her footworking first the tiga, then the sliwa—the triangle and square — for her djurus. She looked very sharp.

Stewart paused in front of Michaels. "You seem a bit distracted, Mr. Michaels. It would be better if you concentrated on your own form."

Michaels flushed, nodded, said, "Sorry, Guru."

Steward nodded, smiled, and moved along to watch other students.

Good thing this wasn't sitting Zen exercise, or he'd have gotten whacked with a stick, Michaels thought. He refocused on his moves, but he felt awkward. He'd only been doing this a few months, and much of it still seemed counterintuitive and unnatural.

After about fifteen minutes of djurus, Stewart called a halt and took questions. Even though his students were doing different forms than Michaels had been doing, he heard a couple of things about stepping in balance and keeping his hips corked that Toni had stressed.

"All right, then. Let's work on combinations," Stewart said. "Toni? Let me use you."

Toni offered Stewart a quick bow. The hand position was slightly different than the bow Stewart returned. Toni's right fist was held in front of her chest, suppinated, the left hand cupping it from the side; the knuckles on Stewart's fist faced into his cupping hand.

"A right punch, please, here." He touched the tip of his nose.

Toni stepped in and shot a fast right punch. If it had connected, it would have surely broken his nose. He slapped her arm with both hands, fired an elbow at her ribs, twisted, stepped, punched at her ribs again, then swept her front foot out and upended her. He caught her around the chest with one arm before she fell. "Okay?"

"Yes."

"Again please, slowly."

Toni repeated her attack, and Stewart did the block-elbow-punch, sweep combination again, and kept her from falling with an arm around her chest.

Right across her breasts, Michaels noted with a small feeling of irritation. Was that really necessary? Toni could fall without hurting herself, he'd seen her hit a hard floor and come up like a rubber ball. This floor had mats all over it.

Toni grinned at Stewart, and the expression was one of pure joy. Michaels had seen that look a few times, usually right after a sexual climax — his or hers.

He did not like seeing the look now.

He mentally chided himself: Get a brain, boy! This is a martial arts class! He's not copping a feel, he's demonstrating a way to beat the crap out of somebody stupid enough to attack him!

Yeah, well, okay.

"Any questions?"

Michaels decided he had one. "Why didn't you hit her in the face instead of the ribs?"

Stewart smiled — as did most of the class. Michaels caught it, but didn't say anything. Stewart caught his look, though.

"Sorry, Mr. Michaels, but I've been telling the class that you can do all the damage you need to an attacker most of the time with body shots. The Indonesians seldom go for the face; the biggest headhunters are… westerners."

Michaels nodded. But that pause before "westerners" told him that Stewart had started to say something else, and Michaels would bet dollars to pennies that the something else was Americans.

"All right, pair up and let's try it. Toni, give me a hand watching?"

Toni said, "Yes, Guru."

Michaels found himself standing across from a skinny kid with a short crew cut and a pair of nose rings who looked to be about seventeen. The kid said, "Giles Patrick."

"Alex Michaels."

"Want to defend first?"

"Sure," Michaels said.

The kid stepped toward him in slow motion, his punch floating toward Michaels at about an eighth speed.

Michaels blocked, got the elbow in, then stalled. What came next?

"Left punch to the ribs, here," the kid said.

"Right, right. Let me try it again."

The kid launched his molasses attack again, and Michaels got the block, elbow, and punch in, but when he tried the sweep, he was off balance and the kid's foot stayed on the floor.

"Got to square your hips," the kid said, "Twist in, shoulders and hips facing the same way."

"Right."

"One more?"

"Sure."

This time, Michaels got all four of the moves, and the kid went down with the sweep. All right! He felt pretty good about that.

Toni moved to stand next to him. "Looked pretty good, Alex, but when you block the punch, do it more upward, like so. Giles?"

The kid grinned and came at Toni, and this time he put some speed into the move.

Toni moved easily, deflected the punch upward, giving herself plenty of room for the elbow into the armpit.

"Thanks, Toni."

He caught a hint of a frown from her, but she nodded and moved to watch the next pair of students.

Frowning? For what? Calling her Toni?

"Okay if I give it a try?" Giles said.

"Uh, sure."

Michaels set himself and attacked. The kid did a one-two-three-four, and Michaels hit the mat, hard. He came up fast.

"You all right, Mr. Michaels?"

"Yeah, fine. And call me Alex." Bad enough he was getting his butt kicked; he didn't need to feel like somebody's grandfather.

He set himself for another attack. It was good to burn some tension off and all, but so far, he couldn't say this class was the most fun he'd ever had. Not at all.

Lord Goswell stood in front of the big seascape that had decorated the east wall of the Smaller Room of his club for as long as he'd been coming here. It was a large oil, eight feet tall by twelve feet wide, done in actinic, watery blues and grays, a wave-tossed sailing ship in the eye of an electrical storm, lightning illuminating the frantic sailors trying to keep the wooden vessel afloat. Very dramatic, what, and almost a photographic realism. He swirled the ice around in his nearly empty gin and tonic glass and was rewarded by the appearance of Paddington and his tray. "Another, milord?"

"Why not? Tell me, do we know who painted this?"

"Yes, milord. It was painted by Jeffery Hawkesworth, in, I believe, 1872."

"It's quite good. A painter I should know?"

"No, milord. He was one of the few civilians killed by the Zulu in South Africa at Rorke's Drift, in 1879. He painted but a handful of canvases. The club came by this some years after he died, a legacy from his brother, Sir William Hawkesworth, who was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Victoria for services in India."

Goswell nodded. "Interesting."

"Shall I fetch your drink now, milord?"

"I don't suppose you'd consider quitting the club and going into service with me?"

"You do me a great honor, milord, but I should have to decline. It wouldn't be proper."

"No, of course not. Carry on."

He watched the servant leave. Drat. You couldn't buy that kind of loyalty. A pity. Bought loyalty was generally worth less than you paid for it.

Paddington returned, bearing another perfectly frosted glass upon his tray.

"There's a telephone call for you, milord." There was a mobile telephone on the tray next to the glass.

Goswell took his glass and the telephone. He nodded. "Thank you, Paddington."

Speaking of bought loyalty. When Paddington was out of earshot, Goswell activated the receiver. "You have the balance of what I need?"

"Roight, I'ave gawt it."

"The usual place then. Half an hour." He shut the phone off.

Goswell stared at the painting, sipping at his fresh drink. A pity this artist had been brought down by some bloody savages. He might have gone on to really great work. Of course, the Royal Army had taught the blackamoors a thing or two during that set-to at Rorke's Drift, hadn't they? A handful of soldiers against thousands of natives, and the troops had, by God, stood their ground and given an account of themselves, hadn't they? Taught the bloody niggers a thing or two about British resolve, by God!

He raised his glass in salute to the painting. "Cheers, old boy."

Chapter 17

Physically, Toni felt pretty good after the workout, though she was a little peeved at Alex for trying to get overly familiar with her in class. He was feeling insecure, she could tell, so he'd kept calling her Toni, instead of Guru, and he'd reached out to pat her on the shoulder or smile at her a couple of times, and she was sure that he did it just to let everybody know they were more than student and teacher. That was fine when they were alone in the gym at home, but here it was inappropriate. It had a "She can kick your ass and she is mine!" flavor to it, and Toni didn't much care for that. She loved him, but sometimes Alex could be such a… little boy about things.

Of course, most of the men she knew were that way, and he was less so than most. And he did love her, so she could maybe cut him a little slack.

There was something else on his mind, though. He was pensive about something, and she couldn't tell what. It could have been the whole situation at work, but it didn't feel that way.

She needed to talk about both things — and how to bring them up without starting a fight was the trick.

Having a lover who was your boss and your student got complicated at times. She'd never thought about that before they had gotten together. Probably because, in her heart of hearts, she'd never really expected they would get together. She'd wanted it, more than anything she'd ever wanted, but it had not seemed destined to happen. And then it had, and it had been wonderful, but not picture-perfect.

It was easier to have something in your imagination than it was in reality. All couples had problems; her parents had been married since just after The Flood, and they loved each other, but even they fought. It wouldn't have been healthy not to. Still, Toni hadn't had any real long-term relationships before, and every time she and Alex got on each other's nerves, she sweated it. She was afraid she was going to lose him. She was afraid that they'd grow apart. She was afraid that she'd had too high an expectation about how things would be and that the reality wouldn't measure up.

The class had been good, though. Guru Stewart was as good a teacher as he was a practitioner. He would take a moment from time to time, while the students were working with each other, to show Toni a move. Their arts were similar enough that she could see the use of what he was giving her, and she much appreciated it.

As the class had been winding down, Stewart had said, "We should work out together, either before or after a regular class, before you leave town. We could teach each other a lot more if we could concentrate on it."

She was thrilled. "I'd like that," she said.

Now, as she and Alex rode in the cab from the school back to the new hotel that MI-6 had sprung for, Toni realized just how much she had been enjoying the silat practice. It was simple, straightforward, no hidden agendas. You worked your body along with your mind, and it kept them both focused on simple things: strike here, step there, get a good base, use your angle and leverage.

Much less complex than dealing with people's emotions, even your own. Maybe especially your own.

Back at their hotel, as they were getting out of the cab, Michaels said, "We're being followed. Did you notice?"

She didn't look around but at him. "What?"

"There's a man in a gray Neon parked across the street and back a hundred feet. He was behind us on the way to the silat class. I'm pretty sure he was with me on foot when I went out to grab a sandwich at lunch today, too. It would be an awfully big coincidence if this guy just happened to be there every time I went out."

"British Intelligence?"

He nodded at the uniformed doorman as the man opened the portal for them. He felt sweaty and smelly after his workout, but he smiled at the doorman as if he and Toni were dressed for a royal wedding.

"Could be, I suppose. If we had one of them digging around in our secrets at Quantico, I'd have the FBI on their tail to make sure nobody grabbed them up and squeezed something out of them."

"You don't sound convinced," she said.

"Well, if we were having one of theirs followed, I'd make sure the field op doing the work was somebody they wouldn't spot — assuming we didn't want them to spot him. The Brits ought to have guys who are as good as ours at sub-rosa surveillance. This is their town; they know it. By all rights, I shouldn't have seen him."

They crossed the lobby and reached the elevator. Toni beat him to the button.

"Maybe they wanted you to see him. Let you know you were being protected."

"Be better just to tell me I was being covered, wouldn't it?"

"Would we tell them?"

"Maybe. Especially if we thought they'd figure it out anyway."

The elevator arrived and chinged, the cast bronze doors opening with ponderous grace. The operator smiled at them. Good thing the new hotel he and Toni had transferred to was being subsidized by the British — the director would have a stroke when she got the bill, otherwise.

"A friendly test? You used to be a field op yourself."

"Yeah," he said, "but I've lost a few moves since then. Oh, I look in the rearview mirror a couple times when I'm driving, and glance around every now and then. I'm not completely asleep since all that business with the Selkie came down and I was very nearly assassinated, but I don't put a lot of effort into it. Not as much as I should. No, this guy just isn't very good. I can't believe MI-5 or -6 would send him out and think I wouldn't notice him."

"Maybe they just don't want to waste a good man on you. Sent in the second team because they figure you're an ugly American who walks around with his head in a thick and blinding ego fog." She smiled.

"They might be right. But I think I'll give Angela Cooper a call and see what's what."

They got onto the elevator. The elevator operator said, "Floor?"

"Four, please." Toni said. In place of her normal faint resonance of the Bronx, she had a passable imitation of a British posh accent. "Four" came out "Foah." Michaels blinked at her.

In their suite, Michaels used his virgil to call Cooper. Toni started the hot water running in the shower, and he watched her strip off her sweats as Cooper came on-line. He caught her at home, and she had her camera on. She wore something red and silky, what he could see of it. His view stopped just below her shoulders. He flipped his own cam on.

"Alex! What can I do for you?"

"Answer a question honestly."

"Of course."

"Are you or MI-5 having me followed?"

"We certainly aren't. I doubt that SS is, but I can check. Hold on a moment." Her cam froze, and the word holding appeared on his thumbnail screen.

Toni peeled her panties off, pulled her sports bra off over her head. She turned and gave him a glorious frontal view, then waved bye-bye as she stepped into the shower and slid the door shut.

He would make this call short, he decided. He wanted to get into that shower before Toni got out. He'd been horny all through the silat class, and it hadn't gotten any better on the ride home.

"Alex? MI-5 says they are not having you surveilled. Is there something we ought to know?" She smiled.

He thought about it quickly. "No, I think I'm just getting paranoid in my old age."

"Hardly old," she said.

"I'll see you tomorrow. Sorry to bother you at home."

"Call any time. It's never a bother." She leaned back, and the red silky shirt or gown or whatever gaped a little at her neck, showing the top of her cleavage.

He discommed, and as he did, his male radar picked up a blip. Was that… interest? He'd only been with a few women. Since he'd gotten his divorce, Toni was the only woman he had been seriously interested in, and he was out of practice, but it sure sounded as if Cooper didn't find him totally disgusting.

Interesting. Good for the old ego, to have a beautiful and bright woman maybe possibly be interested in him. Assuming he wasn't reading the signals wrong.

Not that it mattered. He had much better waiting for him here. He started for the shower, pulling his damp clothes off as he went.

"What did she say?" Toni called from the shower.

"She said it isn't her people," he called back.

"Then we ought to find out who it is," she said.

He pulled the shower door open, was rewarded with a blast of hot vapor that fogged the mirrors behind him. "Tomorrow. Got room for me?"

She glanced down. "If you stand in front. I don't want to get stabbed in the back."

He grinned. "Well, look at that. I wonder where that came from?"

"A present from Ms. Cooper, perhaps?"

He frowned. "What?"

"Well, you didn't have it before you got on the virgil, did you?"

Was she teasing him? She was smiling, but he wasn't sure.

While he considered that, the point became, well, moot.

Toni noticed. "I was just joking, Alex."

He was embarrassed. He grabbed the bar of soap and a wash cloth. "Turn around," he said. "I'll wash your back."

"Alex—"

"I'm really tired," he said. "It was a hard workout, I'm not used to it. I need to get to sleep." It sounded lame, and he knew she knew it. He rubbed the soap into the cloth, fast, worked up a thick lather. She turned around and he scrubbed at her back. Maybe a little harder than he should.

Something was going on between them, something he didn't understand. Whatever it was, he didn't like it. Not a damn bit.

Toni didn't pursue it, though, and he was glad. He didn't really want to get into a deep emotional discussion right now. He was physically wrung out.

He was tired, but, unlike Toni, who fell asleep a few minutes after their shower, Michaels sat reading for an hour. He finally got into bed, turned off the light, and tried to sleep. After lying there for almost another hour, he realized he wasn't drifting off to sleep anytime soon. He was wound up, too tight to relax.

He got out of bed carefully, went into the bathroom, and slipped into jeans, a T-shirt, and running shoes. He dug his kick-taser out of his kit and checked the battery. The little wireless weapon used compressed gas as a propellant, was nonlethal, and fired a pair of charged darts that would knock a man on his butt if they hit him, even through clothes. The effective range was only a few meters, but that was where most gunfights were likely to happen. The old FBI shoot-out maxim concerning such encounters was, "Three feet, three shots, three seconds." If a guy was fifty meters away from you and pumping elbows and ass in the other direction, he wasn't real dangerous. The armorer at Net Force had told him somebody had come up with an electromesh vest that would defeat a taser's charge, but a vest wasn't a full-body suit; you could always shoot somebody in the leg or head. And it was a simple device. It had a laser sight on it. You put the tiny red dot on the target — allowed for a little spread of the needles in flight — and that's where the darts went when you pushed the button. If you weren't too far away. If your hand didn't shake too bad. He'd only had to fire the thing on the job once, and it had worked well enough then.

He tucked the taser into his back pocket, put a windbreaker on to cover it, and quietly left the room.

Michaels left the hotel via a rear exit, circled around the block, and approached the front of the place from behind where the gray Neon had been parked.

Where the guy in the Neon was still parked, sitting behind the wheel. He had his window rolled down and was smoking a cigar. Michaels could smell it fifteen meters away.

The commander of Net Force looped around the car as a bus passed, sending a blast of night air into the Neon, backwashing the cigar smoke into the vehicle. The guy in the car ducked away from the bus's wake.

Michaels pulled his taser, scooted up to the driver's side — the right-hand side in this country — and put the taser on the windowsill as he squatted next to the car.

"Hi. Are we having fun yet?"

The guy, a thin and balding man of maybe thirty-five, nearly swallowed his cigar.

"Jesus Christ! Don't do that! You scared the piss out of me!"

American, no mistaking that accent. A westerner.

On the seat next to him was a small flatscreen computer, a digital camera, and a pair of binoculars. There was also a thermos and a grease-soaked paper bag under a cardboard container with the remains of a fried fish and chips dinner. And on the floor was a large-mouth jar, empty. In case nature called.

If there had been any doubt in Michaels's mind before, this put it to rest. Mr. Cigar here was sitting surveillance.

"Okay, pal, so who are you, and why are you following me?"

"What the hell are you talking about? I don't know you—"

"Look, we can do this easy or we can do it hard. You can tell me, or I can call my friends at British Intelligence and have you picked up as a spy, stuck in a cell so deep it'll take a month for the foggy sunshine to filter down to it."

"Hey, I'm an American citizen, I got rights—"

"This is England, friend. They don't play by the same rules. Your choice."

Cigar considered it for a few seconds. He'd been burned, and he wasn't going to talk his way out of it. He shrugged. "I'm a private investigator from Boise."

Michaels blinked. A private detective?

"Who hired you?"

"I know who you are. I know you can give me a world of crap. You can stick me in a dungeon if you want, but I can't tell you who hired me. Word gets around, I'm outta business. But you're a bright guy, figure it out."

Boise. Oh, shit! Megan. But — why?

Michaels tucked the taser away. He stood. "Might as well go home. If I see you again, I will have the local law take you away."

There was a long moment, then Cigar started his car. Michaels watched him drive away.

He pulled his virgil. It was the middle of the night here. They were what? Seven, eight hours ahead of Idaho on the clock.

Never mind what time it was there. Too bad if he caught her at work. He tapped the memory button, clicked on Megan's number.

"Hello, Alex," she said. Cool. Her voice was a warehouse full of ice in the winter at the North Pole. In the shade. "Hold on a second, let me get where we can talk."

She came back on in a moment, and she lit her cam. She was dressed for work, her hair up. She looked good, as always.

"Megan. How is Susie?"

"She is fine. You called me at work to ask that?"

"No. I just had a few words with your balding, cigar-smoking private eye," he said, his voice barely controlled. "Why are you having me followed?"

"Self-defense," she said.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"After you beat Byron senseless at Christmas, you threatened me, remember?" The ice in her voice melted. Now she sounded like a volcano rumbling, about ready to let go. "You told me that if he spent a night under my roof—my roof, Alex, not yours and mine — that you would have me declared an unfit mother!"

"I never said that. I never said you were an unfit mother—"

"Like hell you didn't! You said you would throw Byron up in my slutty face and go for full custody. Well, mister, two can play that game. Byron will be spending the night tonight, just like he did last night, and the night before, and just like he will be spending it tomorrow! And as many goddamned nights as I want him to be here! And you know what? He will be screwing my brains out, too!"

Just as she had always been able to do, she pushed his hot button. He lost control, snapped back at her almost reflexively. "That won't take much, screwing your brains out. By the time he gets his zipper down it'll be done."

She laughed, knowing she had made him lose his temper. When she spoke again, it was back to the ice queen: "Funny. But laugh at this, funny man. I know all about your sleeping arrangements. About sweet little butter-wouldn' t-melt-in-her-mouth Toni Fiorella. At least Byron is my age, not a child. Let's see how the court views you boinking an employee!"

Oh, shit!

"At least I'm not doing it in front of Susie," he said. Not much of a response.

"So what you're saying is, it's okay to sneak around like a preacher with a whore, but it's not okay for an engaged couple about to be married to do it? I doubt the judge here in Boise will be much impressed with that argument. You were always good at twisting the story to fit your definition of righteous, weren't you?"

He should apologize, he knew. Pour a tanker full of oil on the troubled waters, calm her down. Tell her he'd lost his temper when he'd punched out her new boyfriend — who had grabbed him, don't forget — and said things he didn't really mean. The problem was, he had meant them. Still did, though this certainly put another face on the problem. She was right. A judge wasn't going to take Susie away from Megan unless he could show she was a bad mother, and the truth was, she was a great mother. He'd thought so when they were together, and he thought so now. And he didn't want to lose his daughter. If he was limited to visiting Susie once or twice a year on holidays, their relationship was doomed. She'd grow up thinking of Byron as her father. He'd be the one who'd take her to school and to the mall and he'd be the one helping her with homework and doing the things Michaels should have been doing.

He should apologize, try to get this resolved. But he waited too long.

"Good-bye, Alex. You can call Susie. I don't want her to think I'm shutting you out of her life, but you and I don't have anything else to say to each other. Give my regards to your teenage girlfriend."

She broke the connection.

Michaels blinked. He was in the middle of the sidewalk on a street in downtown London in the middle of the night, feeling as if he had just been slammed in the groin by a linebacker's knee. His ex-wife knew about his affair with Toni — who was a dozen years younger than he was, but hardly a teenager — and he was going to have to hear that in court if he contested the custody hearing for his daughter. He and Toni were both adults, but he was her boss. That wouldn't look good. The FBI frowned on such relationships, and since he didn't have any history with the new director, she wouldn't be ready to put her ass on the line to save his if this all blew up in his face.

He was — not to put too fine a point on it — fucked.

Chapter 18

Peel's first real assignment from his new boss was a field operation, and it was right up his alley. Much better than sitting in a drafty old shed of a church watching stats stream by on a computer's holoproj. Of course, almost anything would be better than that.

It seemed that a certain scientist, formerly one of Bascomb-Coombs's university teachers and now retired to a private consulting position, was poking around in computer territory best left alone. Old BC was about to unleash some new electro-deviltry on the world, and he didn't want his former professor to tread on him while he was about it. And while he didn't want to seriously injure his old mentor, he did want him out of the way for a day or three. Could Peel manage that?

"Level Two," Peel said to the three men in the car. "Are we clear on that?"

The trio in the back — Peel sat in the driver's seat of the big right-hand-drive Dodge four-door-nodded. "Yes, sir," they said as one. They were the youngest of his men, Lewis, Huard, and Doolittle, dressed now as low-life rowdies, in Doc Martin steel-toed boots, baggy denim pants, and black shirts cut to reveal fake tattoos on their arms and chests. The outfits came complete with false nose rings, earrings, and tight skinhead wigs that easily covered their militarily short haircuts.

Here was a picture: a trio of thumpy boys, out for a lark, trouble on the prowl. It was exactly the right image, one that authorities would not look at twice before accepting. Coppers were good about that. You gave them an obvious picture, they didn't scurry around looking for hidden meaning in the brush strokes and hues, they nearly always went for the overall model.

Level Two. The code was one he'd learned from a commando in South Africa during a training seminar there some years ago. For direct physical violence not involving guns or knives, there were five operational levels:

Level One was the mildest, consisting mainly of threats or shoves, intimidation, without physical injury to the subject.

Level Two was mild to moderate damage, bruises, perhaps a broken bone or two, equivalent to a good bar-fight thrashing. A few stitches in the local doctor's surgery, some pain pills, and day or two to rest up at home, and you'd be right as rain.

Level Three was damaging enough to require a stay in hospital, and you'd be weeks or months recovering. A serious encounter.

Level Four meant you would carry reminders of the attack with you for the rest of your life: You'd be crippled with a torn-out knee or ankle, or perhaps crushed hands; you might lose your hearing or an eye, or be otherwise maimed. Recovery would be slow and painful, and you'd never be as complete as you had been before.

Level Five was terminal. A subject was to be made to suffer much pain, to know what he had done, and to have time enough to regret having done it before passing away.

The South Africans would deny having such codes, of course. They hadn't been used officially since apartheid days, but used they still were. Many military and intelligence services around the world had similar operational codes still in place, officially or not. One simply did not talk about such things where unfriendly ears might lurk. Peel recalled an Israeli official some years back, blabbing on in public about their official policy on torture. How it was, under some extreme circumstances, justified. Oh, but the Jews had been lambasted for that when it had hit the media. Of course they used torture when they needed it. Some raghead ready to join Allah in paradise plants a bomb and they catch him before it goes off? Only a fool would sit and politely inquire about it: Excuse me, Abdul, old boy, would you mind awfully telling us where the bomb is so we might disarm it? Some more tea?

Whatever else you had to say about the Jews, they were survivors. If you kicked dirt on their shoes, they would drop a mountain on you in return. Such things didn't bother fanatics ready to die at the drop of a Koran, but more reasonable governments kept that in mind before sending sorties against Israel. Getting hit back thrice as hard as you hit somebody was still a deterrent in some quarters. And the Jews never let it pass, never. You spit on them and sooner or later — likely sooner — you'd have a fire hose blasting you in the face to think about.

If you wanted your country to survive its enemies, you did what you had to do. No one needed to run to CNN and talk about having to shove a few needles under a terrorist's fingernails to save decent men and women from being killed, now did they? It was all part of the game. You got caught, you suffered the consequences. Unfortunately, that was how Peel had been forced to resign, being… overzealous with Irish terrorists — which, as far as he was concerned, was redundant. Whatever peace decrees were signed, the bloody Irish were never going to settle down and be civil. But some of them had died under his interrogations, word had gotten back to the rear echelons, and that was that.

Ah, well. Water under the bridge. That was when he had been a major in good standing, serving king and country. Now, he catered to another master, one who understood the reality of things, and he was already rich as a result. Not a bad trade, all in all.

The target emerged from the pub in a cloud of alcohol-fueled noise and good cheer. BC wanted him bent but not broken, just enough to put him out of active service for a few days, after which it wouldn't matter. It ought not to be too difficult to manage one old college professor.

"Here we go, boys. Move sharp — and be careful."

The target, a rotund man of sixty in a twenty-year-old tweed suit and matching Irish rain hat, sported a mostly white beard and carried a furled umbrella.

"Right, Major," Lewis said, grinning. He was the leader of the attack team. "Here's a fierce old beaky. We'll keep our heads in."

Huard and Doolittle laughed. They exited the car.

The plan was for them to amble to the professor and, once close enough, jump him. A few good thumps and they'd be away, taking his wallet. The police would see it as no more than another sad example of youth gone bad and tell the professor he was lucky to get off as easy as he did. They'd look for the trio of skinheads, but since those three wouldn't exist in an hour, their disguises burned and gone, it would be a fruitless search. A pickup vehicle waited around the corner for Peel's men, a stolen lorry with the license plates switched with those of a van parked at a nearby cinema. A simple operation, and untraceable.

The major cranked the Dodge Ram's engine to depart, which he intended to do as soon as he was sure the assault was proceeding as planned.

The three skinhead slackabouts, laughing and talking too loudly, moved to intersect the professor's path. Lewis held an unlit cigarette, and he was first to reach the target. He waved the cigarette and said something to the older man. Too far away for Peel to hear, but he knew the gist: "Allo, Gramps, gottuh match, have ye?"

Huard and Doolittle drifted out to the sides, to encircle the old man.

Peel put the truck in gear to drive off. It was going by the numbers, one, two, three—

Then, of a moment, the operation leaped past three to seventeen: The professor lunged like bloody Zorro, jabbed at Lewis with the tip of the umbrella, and caught him a hard stab in the solar plexus. The team leader lost his cigarette prop and his wind as he backed off and clutched at his belly. The professor twisted to his left, swung the umbrella like an ax, and whacked Huard across the face. The shock and surprise drove him backward, too.

"Help!" the white-bearded old boy yelled in a voice to wake the dead. "Assassins! Help!"

Doolittle lunged and bounced a fist off the old man's shoulder, and the old fellow spun and slashed at him with the umbrella, missing only because the fake skinhead leaped back like he was bloody Nijinsky doing steps from bloody Swan Lake.

"Help! Help, I say!"

Several men rushed out of the pub and saw the goings-on.

Wonderful. Bloody wonderful!

Lewis recovered, stepped in, dodged another rapier-like thrust from the umbrella, and managed to land a solid punch to the old man's nose. The professor stumbled and sat down hard on the sidewalk but did not release his hold on his weapon. He swung at Doolittle's legs, caught a shin with a whack Peel heard thirty meters away, and flailed his weapon back and forth, missing only because Doolittle did another quick little nancy-boy ballet step to get out of the way.

What a bloody cock up!

The party was over. The three troops took to their heels as the growing mob from the pub rushed them. The boys were young and fit, didn't smoke, contrary to the faggot prop, and should be able to outrun a bunch of middle-aged men who'd had a pint or two. If they couldn't, they deserved what they got. Idiots.

Peel pulled away from the curb, made a turn, and glanced at the professor. Peel did not intend to relate exactly how the attack had gone, nor how it had slipped downhill. The old man probably had a broken nose, that should be enough — though it was likely he was less damaged than the three who had set upon him.

Peel watched in his rearview mirror as the first of the pub-goers reached the professor and helped him to his feet.

Hello all. Meet my friend, Corporal Disaster.

Hell's bells! He'd warned the lads to take care, but they were young and too full of themselves to even consider that one old man was a threat of any kind. Didn't expect they'd be up against John bloody Steed and his samurai umbrella, now had they?

Well. They'd know better next time. Embarrassing and painful lessons were the kind that etched themselves into one's memory.

Christ.

Jay Gridley stood there, machete in one hand, his revolver in the other. He hadn't even moved yet, and already he was dripping with sweat. The jungle lay in front of him, leaves and vines woven into a thick wall of tangles, too verdant and altogether too alive. His heart pounded, and he was breathing hard. It took everything he had just to hold the jungle image, and even so, it wavered at the edges, threatening to collapse at any second.

It wasn't just the problem with concentration. Yeah, Saji's exercises had helped, the breath and meditation and all. And his grandfather had been a Buddhist, and he knew a bunch of them, so it wasn't that weird.

The big thing was, Jay was afraid. No, not just afraid, he was terrified. This was the jungle where the tiger had been, where it had leaped from cover and clawed him, ripped at his brain so he couldn't think. Maybe killing his ability to walk the web forever, and, if so, killing him, too.

He didn't have to be here. Nobody was making him go back into the jungle. But if he couldn't play computers, he might as well be dead.

He took another breath. The little handgun wouldn't even slow the tiger down, he knew, but he couldn't work the machete and hold the big double rifle ready. If it came at him again, he would get hurt again, maybe worse than before.

He could get help. Saji was willing to come with him. He wouldn't carry a gun, because he wouldn't shoot even a VR creature, but he could offer moral support. And there were other ops, some in Net Force, some not, who could link with Jay and share the scenario, some of whom would cheerfully tow a howitzer and who'd blast anything that moved. But that wasn't the way. Jay couldn't spend the rest of his life asking for help. If he couldn't walk in the valley of the shadow alone, he couldn't do his job, and if he couldn't do the thing he loved most in the world, what was the point?

He took yet another breath and let it out slowly. He was going in. If it got him, then it got him, but he was going to go down swinging the big knife and pulling the Webley's trigger if he went, and to hell with it.

He raised the machete. The VR wall of vegetation rippled and wavered. The image started to fade. Crap!

He came back into himself in front of his home workstation, soaked with sour-smelling sweat, heart still thumping madly away.

He'd been ready. He had. He was willing to do it.

Just not ready and willing enough to hold the scenario.

He blew out a sigh. Okay. He'd go back, try it again.

In a little while. When he'd had a chance to get his breath back, to rest a little. Really, he would go back. Really.

Chapter 19

Mikhayl Ruzhyo, now looking like just another tourist, walked toward the Imperial War Museum. The building, with its centered dome and pillared front, could have almost been an Italian church, had not the approach been guarded by a pair of fifteen-inch guns, taken, according to the sign nearby, from HMS Resolution and HMS Ramillies.

Churches had been violent places through the centuries, but he had never heard of one protected by naval guns outside the front entrance.

To one side of the walkway, a tall concrete slab stood, a section of the Berlin Wall taken from near the Brandenburg Gate. He had been a teenager in 1989, when they had started taking the wall down, and the significance of it had been lost on him. What an American president had once called "the evil empire" had been much closer to home. He had known very little about the world outside his homeland in those days. He had learned too much about the world since.

The piece of the Berlin Wall had been painted to look like a giant cartoon face, done in blues and blacks, with its mouth stretched wide open. Against a dark red background in the mouth were the words "Change Your Life."

Easy for you to say.

Ruzhyo had been to London several times, usually on his way elsewhere, once on assignment to erase a wayward colleague, and he had seen a few of the tourist sights: Buckingham Palace, the Wellington Monument, Abbey Road. He and Anna had almost come to England on a holiday once, before she got sick, but something or other had prevented it. Since Anna had died, he hadn't done much tourist activity. Anna would not have enjoyed this place, but these days, war museums suited his tastes.

Inside, the main gallery was full of old tanks and artillery pieces, with various airplanes hung from the ceiling. He strolled past a Mark V tank, a 9.2-inch howitzer, a Jeep. Gray greens were the dominant colors.

The most impressive display was of a giant V2 rocket, the side cut away to show the engine, such as it was. The missile was huge, painted a dark green. It looked to him like a cartoon rocket ship, a pointed cigar with fins on the tail.

Ruzhyo stared at the V2. How frightening it must have been to civilians to see this monster dropping from the skies during the Blitz. According to the placard, more than 6,500 of the V2s and smaller V1s fell on London and South East in hard and explosive hailstorms, killing a total of 8,938 people.

How, he wondered, had they been able to come up with the exact number killed? 8,938?

If the Germans had been able to manage a decent guidance system for these beasts, they would have killed a lot more. But while they had been fearsome devices, shooting them off had been rather like launching pop bottle rockets. That they were able to hit London at all had been more due to luck than skill. Many, if not most, of the V1s and V2s had fallen harmlessly into the sea or onto the countryside. And in a war, 9,000 civilians mean little in the overall casualty count. A few drops in an ocean of blood.

What men did best was to kill other men. Especially when given leave to do so in a war.

Ruzhyo strolled past a searchlight, another item painted a flaky military green; he looked at a shellacked and unpainted wooden fishing boat used during the evacuation at Dunkirk; he examined Monty's tank, one in which he'd ridden during the North Africa campaign against Rommel, when Montgomery was still a lowly general and not yet the famous field marshal.

The monuments of killing.

There were also side rooms with cryptography equipment the museum-goers could play with, and on the lower ground floor, a World War One experience, designed to look like the trenches. This floor also had a Blitz display, and a Second World War area, as well as a more modern conflict display: Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Falklands, Bosnia, the Middle East. Ruzhyo quickly passed through the more contemporary presentations; they held little interest for him. He knew about those kinds of wars. Chetsnya and the invading Russians lived in his memory as real as if it had taken place yesterday and not almost twenty years past.

Even though it had been a sea of mud then, it was a much cleaner business in the trenches in France in 1915 than it was when Ruzhyo had been Spetsnaz. Cleaner in the sense that you knew who your enemies were, you knew where they were, and you had things laid out for you in black and white. Attack here, shoot there, live or die along the way. There was little skulking about and shooting people while they sat at a desk or lay in bed with a wife or mistress. Those had been his stock in trade. He knew about that kind of war.

It wasn't particularly satisfying, these monuments to war, but it seemed appropriate. He would book his flight out and leave today, if possible. Perhaps by way of Spain, using another identity. Madrid would be warm by now, and the smells of Spain were more pleasing than those of England.

He should have been at home, visiting with his wife and son, John Howard knew, but he couldn't relax enough. He'd just sit there simmering, and his family would know and feel it. It wouldn't be pleasant for anybody. Might as well be at work, though there didn't seem to be much he could do here, either.

He thought about Ruzhyo, wondered about him. How could a man be a cold-blooded killer? He had started out a soldier, and killing sometimes went with the territory, but somewhere along the way, somebody had recruited the man for wetwork. He had stopped being a soldier and become an assassin, a thing of the dark. Howard could understand that an adrenaline rush could pump you up for sneaking around in the back alleys two steps ahead of somebody chasing you, but the stone-hearted murders? That was different—

"Wool-gathering, John?"

Howard smiled at Fernandez. "Just thinking about our quarry."

"Wishing you knew where to find him?"

"That, too. But more wondering how he can do what does." He explained, expecting Julio to agree with him.

To his surprise, his friend shook his head. "Not a lot of difference, way I see it."

"Shooting men in the back of the head? You don't see the difference?"

"Would they be any deader if he had shot them in the front of the head?"

"Come again?"

"Those two we lost were soldiers, on guard duty. The risk goes with the job. If they'd been paying attention, they'd probably still be alive — or at least they'd have gotten to shoot back. But when you get right down to it, how is it different, really? Somebody shoots you for evil and might, or they shoot you for goodness and right — you're still cold, either way. Their reasons won't matter to you, will they? Dead is dead."

Howard stared at Fernandez as if the sergeant had just turned into a big caterpillar puffing on a hookah: Whoo are youu?

Fernandez caught the look and grinned. "You don't like spies and assassins, but they're as much a part of an army now as they ever were. You want to go into battle with the advantages on your side, or at least not against you. So you send a spy into the enemy camp to find out where they plan to march. He's doing the same to you, so the side with the quicker, smarter, faster spy gets a half step on the other side. That game is as old as war, isn't it?"

"Spies aren't the same as assassins," Howard pointed out.

"Yeah, that's true. But let me ask you a hypothetical question, Colonel. Suppose you could go back in time to Germany in the late thirties—"

"— and assassinate Hitler?" Howard finished. He had heard this one before.

"Yeah. Would you?"

"In a heartbeat. He was a monster. It would save millions of innocent lives."

"You'd still be an assassin, then, right?"

"Yes, but in this case, the ends would justify the means. Sometimes it does, Julio. I'd take the moral heat."

"No question, and I'd pop him, too. But how do we know what our quarry's ends were? Why he got into what he's into? And think about what you might have done in his place, out there in the desert. We went to collect him, and if he had come out shooting, we'd have clotheslined him, right? Deleted him cold?"

"Yes."

"So, tactically, he was surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. The way we saw it, he either gave up or died."

"We saw it that way. We were wrong."

"Yes, sir. He beat us, straight up, and he did it with the tools he had. I wouldn't have been able to do it. You wouldn't have, either, would you?"

"No."

"You'd have gone down shooting."

"Probably."

"Me, too. And we'd be dead. Ruzhyo isn't. And he's on the loose."

"You admire this guy?"

"Man beats me at my game, oh, yeah. I'm pretty good at what I do; so are you. This guy, he's a formidable enemy, and when push comes to shove, those are the ones we want to face off with, aren't they? You remember the shoot-out in Grozny?"

Howard nodded. He remembered.

"Those revolutionaries we took down weren't in our league. They never had a chance once we decided to scoop 'em up. Screwed, blued, and tattooed. You remarked on your disappointment on the flight home. How… easy it was."

"I remember."

"This ice man we're after, he's not easy. He's in our league — hell, maybe better than we are. Catching him will mean something, won't it?"

"Damn straight."

"It's not a war, John, but it's not a walk in the park. You're pissed off because the guy whipped us, not because he shoots people. The samurai killed a lot more people than the ninja ever did. It's not about body counts. It's about winning."

Howard couldn't stop a small grin. "When did you get to be such a… Taoist philosopher, Julio?"

"I'm about to be a married man with a child. It makes a man think."

"Well, go home and take care of your bride-to-be. You aren't doing any good here."

The warning chime on Howard's computer peeped. A flagged subject.

"Go ahead, computer," Howard said.

"Subject A-1 located," the computer said.

Howard reached for the computer. Damn! They had him!

Well, if they could get there fast enough. Wherever there was.