Night Moves

Chapter 20

Peel stood watching Bascomb-Coombs, once again not having a clue what the man was doing. But BC liked an audience, so he gave him a running commentary.

"Here we go. We insert the passwords we have ras-called from the gatekeepers, thus… and we are in. A straight shot to the inner doors, which we also open with no effort at all…."

He tapped at the keyboard, his fingers dancing like little elves over the thing. He hummed to himself and laughed softly.

"Poor sods. They've rebuilt their walls and made them twice as thick and high as they were, but it doesn't matter, you see. There still must be the pass-through, and no matter how narrow the gates, if you have the keys, you are unstoppable! Voila!"

He turned from the computer screen, all awash with complex lines and clots of numbers and letters that Peel did not comprehend. "How is your desire for power, Terrance?"

"Excuse me?"

Bascomb-Coombs pointed at the keyboard. "Come over here and press this key, and for a few milliseconds you'll be the most powerful man in the world. You will have more of an effect on more people's lives than anyone else on the planet."

Peel stared at the man but didn't move.

"Ah, you hesitate. You must know the dictum, 'With great power comes great responsibility'?"

"Churchill?"

The scientist smiled. "Spider-Man, actually. Sure you don't want to do the deed?"

Peel shook his head.

"Well. Onward and upward, then." He tapped the key once, smartly. "That ought to give the rabble something to think about."

"Commander Michaels?"

Michaels looked up from his desk. He didn't recognize the man standing there, he was just another of the young and clean-cut types running around the place, dressed in a suit and tie. Could have been an FBI agent, save that his clothes were cut better. "Yes?"

"DG Hamilton wanted me to deliver this to you, sir."

He handed a silvery disk about the size of a quarter to Michaels. "If you'll thumbprint here, sir?" He held a print reader out. Michaels pressed his right thumb against a small gray panel on the device. The messenger looked at the readout and was apparently satisfied with the print match. "Thank you, sir."

Michaels looked at the tiny computer disk. If you were worried about your computer system being burgled and you didn't trust your electronic protection, there were ways to circumvent your fear. The easiest method was to disengage your computer from all contact with other machines, strip out all communications right down to the hardwiring. If it was unplugged and not firewired or optically linked to any other computer in a network, local or external, you were safe.

Nobody could sneak in your house if you didn't have any doors or windows.

Of course, you couldn't get out, either, and that was a problem.

So if you isolated yourself, you accepted input only via secure and scanned disks. And if you needed to reach out to another computer, you sent them a hand-carried disk. It was slow, it was cumbersome, but it was safe.

Michaels stuck the disk into his reader and had his viral software crunch it. Even though it was supposed to be secure, you still checked, always.

The software — the best antiviral/antivermal/Betty Crocker program MI-6 had — dutifully reported that the coin-sized disk was clean, no sign of viruses, worms, or unwanted pastries.

Michaels ran the disk. Things were looking up on a few fronts. The airline reservation and flight control computers were, by and large, back up and running smoothly. That was the good news.

The bad news was, they hadn't been able to backwalk the hack that had caused the problem in the first place. It just… stopped past a series of firewalls and foolpits.

"Good afternoon, Alex."

He glanced up at Angela. She was in a green T-shirt, faded and kind of tight jeans, and tennis shoes. His surprise at her outfit must have showed. She smiled and said, "Casual Saturday."

"Ah."

"Anything new?"

"Afraid not. I was just going over the disk your boss sent over. The airlines are back on-line."

She strolled in his direction, leaned in to look over his shoulder.

He felt her right breast brush against his back.

Apparently Casual Saturday meant no bra, too. Damn.

She quickly leaned back. "Well, that's good news, at least."

The young man who had delivered the disk came into the room, not exactly running, but close to it. "Commander, DG Hamilton would like to have a word. You, as well, Cooper."

"Trouble?"

"I couldn't say, sir."

Trouble.

Lord Goswell sat in his study, sipping a gin and tonic, looking through the French doors. Seemed as if it might rain again. Maybe it would come down hard enough to drown the bloody rabbits; certainly his shooting hadn't been much good there. Perhaps he needed to have his eyes done sooner rather than later.

He heard one of the maids chattering madly at somebody in the hall. He smiled as he sipped his drink. He pulled his pocket watch out and looked at it.

"What is the problem, Applewhite?"

The butler came into the room, looking apologetic. "Sorry about the disturbance, milord. The maid and Cook were distraught."

"Whatever for?"

"It seems the telly has gone down. And the telephones are also on the blink."

"Really?"

"Yes, milord. Can't even pick up most of the radio channels on the battery unit or in the automobiles."

"Well, that would be distressing then, wouldn't it? Think it's the Russians dropping bombs?"

"I hardly think so, milord."

"Well, I'm sure his majesty's government will see to whatever the problem is soonest."

"Yes, milord."

Applewhite went back to calm the maid and Cook, and Goswell rattled his ice cubes around in his drink. Had to hand it to that scientist fellow, he was dashedly good at the computer business. Not only had the airlines been knocked down again, but worldwide communications had been whacked solidly, most of the satellites taken off-line. And the telly and radio signals that depended on the network of satellites had been disrupted, along with telephonic operations. Quite a stroke. And, of course, operations in the U.K. would come back much sooner than the rest of the world, if Bascomb-Coombs's calculations were correct — and so far, they always had been. A brilliant fellow, he was.

A pity he would have to die. Good help was so hard to find.

Chapter 21

Net Force's military arm had cranked up one of the old overhauled and refitted 747s for the hop to England, and John Howard sat in the thing, wishing it was an SST. The sooner they got to the U.K., the better. Of course, he might as well wish for a time-travel machine so he could have gotten there yesterday. Government agencies went on diets and binges as often as attendees at a fat farm, and Congress had been in moderate belt-tightening mode when Net Force had been funded. It could have been worse, though. They might have come up with some old DC-3 prop jobs the DEA had confiscated from drug runners instead of the 747s.

He wanted to get his hands on Ruzhyo right now, but at least he was on the way. He'd have to work the logistics with the Brits when they got there, but they had an arrangement with his majesty's government, and having Alex Michaels already in England wouldn't hurt. Howard couldn't imagine the British would give them any flak about collecting a former Spetsnaz killer. Of course, they didn't have the death penalty over there, and if they went through formal extradition, that could be a problem. A lot of countries had gotten on their high horses about that, refusing to turn escaped scum over to the U.S. unless they agreed not to fry the bastards.

Well, it wasn't going to come to that. There wouldn't be any paperwork filed on the killer through his majesty's legal system. If he didn't come back with them to face American justice, then it would certainly be because he was beyond any earthly justice.

You didn't kill Net Force people and get away with it. Not on Howard's watch.

He was dressed for travel and not the field, but he had his smaller gear pack on the empty seat next to him, and now he pawed through it. He tended to recheck his gear frequently when he went on a mission, even though not much was likely to have happened to it since he'd checked it five minutes earlier. It was a nervous habit, and he'd realized a long time ago he was going to do it, so he didn't worry about it any longer. Better safe than sorry.

He looked around and saw that Julio was all the way back toward the tail, heading for an empty washroom. Good. It wouldn't do for Julio to see what he'd done to his good luck talisman, not yet anyway.

He removed the charm from the pack and looked at it. Talisman was a funny way of thinking about a handgun. But this was an ancient Smith & Wesson.357 model 66 stainless steel revolver, unlike the polymer H&K tacticals the rest of his unit had been issued. For years, he had carried the piece as it had come stock from the box — well, except for a little action smoothing by the armorer and a set of hand-filing, after-market grips. A six-shot wheelgun, plain iron sights, no bells and whistles. He was comfortable with it, it had been on his hip every time he had gone into a firefight, and like the old Thompson subgun he had inherited, there was a kind of energy wrapped around it. He wasn't particularly superstitious, didn't avoid black cats or worry about ladders or mirrors, but he did believe the Smith had some magic about it. Part of that was that the Smith was a trusted, dependable design, functional, nothing complex to go wrong. Not that he was a technophobe or some kind of Luddite, but Howard had always liked the simple-is-better philosophy when it came to hardware. The RA and Navy SpecForce elites, the Rangers, the SEALs, the green hats, had all kinds of new computer-augmented personal weaponry. Things like carbines with TV cams on them you could stick around a corner and shoot without being seen; pieces with built-in trackers, lasers, grenade launchers, the whole package, expensive as hell, and he could have put in for them, but Howard's Strike Teams carried plain-Jane — if top of the line—9mm subguns. They went bang when you pulled the trigger, you could get the ammo anywhere in the world if you ran out, it being the most common military handgun round, and he figured it was the operator's job to make sure the bullet was on target. Sure, they had the modified SIPESUIT armor, and it had plenty of tactical computer stuff built in, LOSIR corns and headset graphics and GPS and all, but if those failed, you could at least still shoot your weapon manually. The principle of KISS for the lethal hardware had always appealed, and he'd never been shy about letting people know he favored it.

So when he looked at his trusty six-gun with the Tasco Optima 2000 dot scope mounted where the notch-and-post sights used to be, it felt, well, a little weird. And after all the years of shaking his head and calling the polymer sidearms "Tupperware guns," his new acquisition might be thought by those who knew him to have shaded right on into the hypocritical.

It wasn't all that complex, the scope. What you had was a tiny, clear plastic window mounted an inch and a half or so in front of a tiny red diode that projected a red dot onto the window. Unless the safety cap was over it, the sight was always on, and the battery was good for a lot of use. The way you turned the thing off was, you put the cap on it, and the tiny computer in the scope put it to sleep. How it worked in practice was also simple: You popped the cover off, held the gun up, both eyes open, and the little red dot floated in the air in front of you, just over the piece. Wherever you put the dot — once you had it zeroed — that was where the bullet went, assuming you didn't jerk too much when you dropped the hammer. No parallax. And unlike a laser, there was no beam or glowing dot for an enemy to see and target — the dot wasn't visible from the muzzle side, and if it had been, it was a seven-minute-of-angle pinhead, anyhow.

The unit weighed about as much as a round of starfish ammo, didn't add much bulk, and was a lot easier to line up than standard iron sights. It was almost indestructible, too, according to reports. While Howard didn't need glasses to read his newspaper yet, the front sight on his short-barreled pistol had seemed a little fuzzy the last few months. When the rangemaster showed him this little toy on one of the range pistols, he'd tried it, just for the hell of it.

And had shot 15 percent better the first time he tried it.

For a man to improve his combat efficiency with a handgun by 15 percent just like that was nothing to wave off lightly. After a couple more magazines, that went up a couple more points, too.

At first, he'd tried to ignore it. But on subsequent visits to the range, he'd used the thing again. The armorer told him he could pull the back sight, grind the front post off, and bead-blast the Smith, mount the electronic replacement, and get it done in a few days. Hell, he'd said, begging the colonel's pardon, but at real close range you were gonna point-shoot that antique and not use the sights anyhow, and outside six or eight yards, the red dot would make the colonel a better shooter. What was the problem?

Howard hadn't said, but mostly the problem would be the taste of crow.

Julio would never let him live it down.

It had taken a month or so, but once he started down that road, it was impossible to go back, there was no arguing with the numbers. Same gun, same ammo, and he was more accurate and faster with the dot scope. So it was a done deal, he'd had this technological marvel mounted on top of a weapon whose basic form went all the way back to Samuel Colt's first designs, in what? The 1830s? Even the double-action revolver wasn't a new invention; it was used on Robert Adams's self-cockers only sixteen or eighteen years after Sam Colt's early revolvers. The scope and the Smith thus made for an interesting marriage: seventeenth-century technology and twenty-first.

And this was a May-December marriage Howard didn't want his sergeant to notice, just yet. Maybe when he did, things would be heated up enough so it wouldn't require an explanation.

He looked up and saw Julio coming back from the can. He shoved the revolver back into his bag. At the same time, one of the flight crew, the navigator, approached from the other direction. "Colonel?"

He looked at the navigator. "Yes?"

"We, uh, have a problem, sir."

The new light-rail shuttle train, carrying 674 passengers from Pretoria to Johannesburg, blew through the scheduled stop at Tembisa Station at almost 140 kilometers per hour. The engineer threw the manual override, took control from the computer, applied the brakes, and the train began slowing. It would have been all right — except for the second passenger train stalled just south of Tembisa.

The shuttle was still doing more than 90 when it plowed into the back of the stopped train that was supposed to be ten minutes ahead and moving at speed.

Both trains buckled, and more than two thirds of each left the tracks, accordioned like toys jammed together by a spoiled child.

Half the people in the rear car of the stopped train were killed instantly. Others were thrown from the smashed car to their deaths.

A few were electrocuted by downed power lines.

The engineer of the moving train stayed at his post and died there, along with scores of panicked passengers just behind him. His last words, as recorded by the black box, were, "Oh, shit!"

A fire, started by sparks from the impact or maybe electricity, set the interior of one of the stopped train's cars aflame. Smoke boiled forth and laid a black cloud over the scene.

Estimates of the dead were ballpark, but the number was more than 200. More would doubtless die on the way to area hospitals or later from injuries.

Nobody even worried about the third shuttle following ten minutes later. They should have. The engineer on this train frowned as he realized that his communications gear was out and that his vehicle was going too fast as it approached the station.

By the time he wrested control away from the computer, it was too late.

His last words would never be known, as the impact was sufficiently violent to destroy this train's black box, leaving only a burned-out husk.

The beacon switched off just as the L10-11C3 wide-body jumbo jet from Japan came in for a landing at Kona during a tropical shower. The pilot apparently overreacted as the plane yawed, and JAL Heavy dropped hard enough to collapse the rear landing gear on the port side. The big craft slewed starboard, spun, and slid sideways across the runway, square into a Hawaiian Air MD-80 waiting to taxi for takeoff for the short hop to Maui. The smaller bird spewed flaming jet fuel, ignited, and the resulting fireball set the larger craft on fire. There was a terrific explosion. Tourists waiting inside the airport were killed as shattered aluminum sleeted like shrapnel through the open-walled terminal, cutting down everything in its path.

Pieces of the jumbo jet and human body parts rained down as far as half a mile away.

Four hundred and eighty died in the crash, fourteen were killed outright in the terminal or on the aprons, and fifty-six more were seriously injured.

Despite heroic measures, eighteen polio patients breathing on respirators in the Dundee Memorial Hospital died when the backup generators failed after a power outage blacked out the city. The problem was worse because it was so dark in the building away from the battery-powered lighting that nobody could find some of the dead until almost an hour later.

"Oh, Lord," Alex Michaels said. "He's killing people."

The video of the South African train accident came from a security cam at Tembisa Station. The plane crash was recorded by a tourist waiting for a passenger on the JAL jet. The Australian deaths were vox only, no video.

Just as well, Michaels thought. The idea of watching almost a score of people die trying to breathe might have been more than he could stand. At least the train and jet crashes had been quick for those who perished.

"Yes," Cooper said. "He's bollixed dozens of major systems. I don't see how it is possible."

Neither did Michaels, but like the apocryphal ostrich with his head in the sand, not seeing it didn't make it go away. Communications, transportation, even traffic signals were screwed up. Who was this guy? How could he do such things all over the world at the same time?

They were in the office that MI-6 had provided, and the building around them hummed with frantic energy that matched their own. He looked at Toni. "We need to talk to our people at home."

"Unless you have a fast carrier pigeon, good luck," Toni said. "The landlines that work via the Atlantic cable are jammed, and anything going up to satcoms is scrambled worse than Humpty Dumpty."

"I can't believe it. He's managed to shut down virtually everything tied into a major computer net. The power is beyond anything we've ever seen," Cooper said.

That was for damn sure. Worse, why was the hacker doing it? What did he stand to gain? Was he a terrorist? Michaels knew he needed to do something. But — what? What could you do when the tools you normally used were all broken?

Better come up with some new ones, Alex, or this guy is going to bring the whole planet to a screeching halt. Maybe he's already done so. You can't get good intel, so how would you know?

"We got these vids and reports on our shielded and hardened lines," Cooper said. "We'll get as much input via them as possible. I'll go and see if we can obtain time on one to contact your agency in the States."

She left, and Michaels stared at the desk. "We've got to do something," he said.

"I know."

But — what?

Chapter 22

Ruzhyo stood in front of the post office across from Westminster Cathedral. He was aware of the frantic scurrying around him. There had been a major computer and power failure, it seemed. He had been buying stamps when the electricity failed, and the machine had gone blank and eaten his coins. He had left the building and noticed that the traffic signals were out, and that there was a kind of puzzled worry in the air. Policemen arrived and began directing traffic at the intersection. He listened to snatches of conversations from passersby and got the buzz of what they knew and didn't, and he wondered about it. But that did not distract him so much that he missed the man angling in toward him from the left, dodging traffic as he hurried across Victoria Street.

That the man was coming toward him — for him — was certain. The man was young, fit, smiling, but that meant nothing, Ruzhyo had smiled at some of the people he had deleted. It was disarming, a big smile, it allayed suspicion. How dangerous was a man grinning at you?

Such a man could be deadly, Ruzhyo knew. But was this one so?

Though dressed like a layabout in a leather jacket and jeans, the young man moved like a soldier, Ruzhyo thought. He had a definite military bearing to his step. This one had spent time in uniform, no question. Either that, or he was wearing a back brace.

Ruzhyo considered his options.

What should he do? Run? Stand his ground?

He looked around. No others were focused on him, at least not that he could see. If it was just the one, what did that mean? The smiling man showed no hardware, and though he certainly could have a pistol hidden under his motorcycle jacket, his hands were swinging loosely, making no move to draw a gun.

Ruzhyo was unarmed, save for a small pocket knife, not a particularly formidable weapon. True, he could kill with the knife at grappling range, if need be, but if it came to that, the situation would be bad.

If he was bracketed by a collection or deletion team, one good enough that he could spot only the one who was making no effort to hide, then he was already caught or dead. They would be keyed on the smiling man who was almost all the way across the street now, and a gesture from the smiling man would end the game.

Ruzhyo put his own hand into his right trouser pocket and found the small knife. It had a three-inch blade he could flick open with his thumb as fast as a springloaded switchblade. But even so, if he was targeted, and if he took his hand out of his pocket with a weapon, he'd probably be dead before he could get the knife cleared. If he had been a designated shooter on a delete team, he would be aiming at the head — a central nervous system hit being the only certain way to be sure of an instant stop. A rifle bullet through the brain generally brought things to an end.

Were there crosshairs laid upon his brow? A jittery laser spot dancing on the back of his head?

He looked around again, but could not spot the shooter. Nor did he see any others on the street paying him undue attention. Were they there? Had he gotten so old he had lost his ability to spot death watching him? Or was the leather-jacketed man alone?

While he was ready to go if beaten by players better than he, Ruzhyo found this scenario bothersome. He hadn't thought it would be this easy for them. He had expected to give a better account of himself in the final moves. Perhaps he was too far gone, too burned out, and perhaps this was his final play.

The smiling man achieved the curb and stopped three meters away, well outside the range for a quick lunge with a short knife.

"Mr. Ruzhyo," the man said. It was not a question. His right hand had drifted down to the hem of his jacket by his hip. There was a weapon there, a knife or a gun.

"Yes." No point in denying it. This man wouldn't be taken in by a protestation of mistaken identity. If he'd had the knife out and opened, it would be no contest. Ruzhyo could move five or six meters and stab a man clawing for a pistol nestled in a concealed holster before the man could draw his weapon. This was not an especially challenging feat. Any good knife fighter could do it; it was a simple matter of speed and reaction time. But with the knife in his pocket, it was a different proposition. Maybe he could get there first, maybe not. Probably he could take his killer with him, at the very least. But if there was a shooter in a car or hiding in a building already lined up? Well, in that case, any sudden move would end with Ruzhyo facedown on the concrete, probably dead before he got there. It would be a clean, quick end. It was tempting to see.

"Hello, sir. I'm Corporal Huard. Major Terrance Peel sends his regards and wonders if you might be free for dinner this evening?"

Peel? How did he know Ruzhyo was in London? And what did he want?

The young soldier offered Ruzhyo a card. It had an address on it.

"About seven o'clock all right?" Huard said.

Ruzhyo nodded.

"Will you be needing directions or a ride?"

"No."

"Right, then. See you later."

Huard smiled, turned, and marched off. Ruzhyo watched him until the man was out of sight. Nobody else joined him. It made him feel a little better that Huard seemed to have been alone. But even so, he should have spotted him sooner.

Ruzhyo looked at the card. Peel. How interesting. It had been nearly two years since he had met the man. The major had trained one of the paramilitary units for Plekhanov, after having been thrown out of the British Army for… What had it been? Torturing an IRA prisoner to death? What was he doing now? And how had he known Ruzhyo was here? On this corner, at this time? He must have had his men following him. Why?

And why hadn't he noticed a tail sooner?

He put the card into his pocket, the address already committed to memory. He would go and find out.

Jay wasn't alone this time. He had brought a native guide to stand watch. Well, it was actually a "motion detector" program, one that would squeal if anybody — or any thing—entered his scenario uninvited — and warn him in time to get his gun ready. At least he hoped it would warn him in time. Having the program look like a turbaned native guide was as good as anything. And he had altered the scenario a little more, in that he was no longer carrying the old double-barreled elephant rifle lovingly handcrafted by a Victorian English gunsmith. Now the weapon he had on a strap digging into his shoulder and leveled, ready at his hip, was a shotgun. And not just an ordinary shotgun, but a South African Streetsweeper, a short-barreled, semiautomatic, drum-fed twelve-gauge, with twelve rounds of double-aught buckshot alternating with twelve sabot slugs in the magazine and one more in the chamber. If something moved in front of him, all Jay had to do was point the gun and start pulling the trigger, and he could put up a screaming maw of deadly metal teeth that would chew up anything in their path. Nothing alive could eat that much lead and keep coming. The gun was heavy, but it was a comforting weight on that strap digging into his shoulder.

"Keep a sharp eye out," Jay said.

"Yes, sahib."

Jay bent to look at the ground, using the new skills he had learned from Saji in the New Mexico desert and mountain scenario. Cutting sign, and looking as much for what wasn't there as much as what was. He knew that the tiger must have gone this way because, in the perverse logic of computer VR, it couldn't have gone this way. And since he knew that, he should be able to track it. You couldn't move through this kind of brush without leaving a sign.

The smelly jungle heat washed over him like a dead man's final breath, cloying and nauseating, but he ignored it. He could have made a more pleasant scenario, a nice ski lodge in the Alps, or a sunny ocean beach at Malibu, with wheeling seagulls and bikini-clad starlets bouncing past, but this was the place where the tiger had jumped him, and this was the place he had to get back on the figurative horse. If he didn't, he knew he would always be afraid. And you couldn't webwalk if you were afraid; there were too many set-piece scenarios you had to live in, too many jungles out there to avoid them all.

The fear tasted like warm zinc in his mouth. He sweated, he trembled, he felt his wind nearly catch in a sob every other breath. Once upon a time, he had been Super Jay, faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive, able to laugh at any and all dangers in any dark corner of the net. But not anymore. The tiger's massive claw had wiped that invulnerability away. It had shown Jay the darkness at the end of the road. The darkness where everybody had to go eventually, a thing he had known intellectually but had not really in his heart of hearts believed.

He believed it now.

He hated the tiger for that. For making him afraid. For forcing him to acknowledge what everybody knew but nobody really talked about. Jay didn't believe in a benevolent god waiting to greet him at the pearly gates to some mythical heaven, no more than he believed in a malevolent ruler of some never-ending hell. His faith had been in himself, in his own abilities, and the tiger had taken that from him. Saji's talk of Buddhism had helped, and he felt drawn to that religion because it was so pragmatic and based in earthly reality, but it hadn't erased the fear.

He saw a mark in the jungle floor, a slight depression on a patch of old leaves and twigs long since rotted to damp humus. He glanced up at the guide, who stood scanning the jungle, then back at the mark. Not very deep for such a huge tiger, but it was part of a track, he was sure of it. It had gone this way.

Which meant that Jay was going to have to go this way, too.

He raised from his crouch. "Come on, Mowgli. Through here."

"Yes, sahib."

So far, the scenario was holding steady; that was something.

He wondered how long he could maintain the surrounding imagery if he saw the tiger? Not very long, he figured.

Jay took a deep breath, adjusted the shotgun's strap, and started forward.

Peel smiled at Huard. Inside his office, the former church, the younger man looked somehow out of place. Probably hadn't been in a church since he was a lad, not that Peel could claim too many such visits himself. Outside of attending regimental weddings and funerals and this place, religion hadn't been his cup of tea.

"And your impression of the fellow?"

"Well, sir, he didn't seem all that swift. I mean, he didn't see me until I stepped in front of him, almost on his toes, and he just stood there with his hand in his pocket like he was playing with himself. I'd say he's lost most of his moves since he was with the Russians. If he ever had any moves. Sir."

Peel nodded. "You have the recording?"

"Right here."

Huard tendered an infoball the size of a marble.

Peel slotted the infoball into the computer's reader and clicked it on. The holographic projection appeared at one-sixth scale over Peel's desk. The image of Ruzhyo from the minicam in Huard's belt buckle was remarkably sharp and stable. Ought to be, for what they'd paid for the bloody camera. The former Spetsnaz agent was across the street, his image blocked by passing vehicles as Huard started toward him.

"Computer, magnification times two."

The holoproj blinked and doubled in size. Ruzhyo stood on the street corner, staring into space. Yes, well, he did look distracted — hello?

"Computer, stop play. Rewind fifty frames, replay, magnification times three."

Huard, still at a modified parade rest, frowned. "Sir?"

"Watch, Huard. And learn."

The image blinked and began again, larger, a closer view of Ruzhyo. There. Just as the image waggled a little — that would be Huard stepping from the curb — Ruzhyo's eyes shifted.

Peel grinned. "There's where he spotted you, Corporal."

"Sir?"

"He's just seen you across the street. And without moving his head too much, he's checking out his surroundings. Looking for other players."

Huard shook his head. "I don't see it, sir."

"No, of course not. Computer, normal-size image."

The view shifted, just as Ruzhyo put his hand into his pocket.

Peel said, "He's got a weapon in his pocket. Knife, or maybe one of the small South American keychain pistols."

"How can you tell that? Sir."

"Because that's what I'd have done if I saw you coming toward me across the street. If you had made any sudden moves once you got there, he would have cut your throat or put a couple of small-caliber bullets into you."

"I was armed, sir."

"Huard, this man was killing people when you were still in short pants. That you were unaware of him seeing you and preparing for your arrival is hardly unexpected. Had you reached for your pistol, I expect we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Huard didn't believe him, but he said, "If you say so, sir."

Peel grinned. Youth was so wasted on the young. They thought they were going to live forever; it was amazing that as many of them lived as long as they did. If Huard survived, someday he might understand.

"That's all, then. Carry on."

"Sir." Huard came to attention, did an about face, and left the building.

"Computer, replay sequence."

The machine obeyed. Peel watched. He did enjoy watching a real professional at work. He was looking forward to seeing Ruzhyo again. Good men were hard to find.

Chapter 23

Toni didn't have any spare time, not with the crisis as dramatic as it was, but she'd realized long ago that if she didn't exercise, she wouldn't be much good in the middle of a high-stress environment. She had to have a valve to bleed off the pressure, and if she went a day or two without doing silat, or at least some serious stretching, she got cranky and stupid. So when her days got really busy, when things started going to hell in a handbasket and there simply wasn't time to work out, she stole the minutes from elsewhere. Sometimes it was a skipped lunch, sometimes dinner. Sometimes, it was sleep. She could miss a meal or an hour of shut-eye and still function, but without exercise, she was surly and out of sorts. She made dumb mistakes, growled at people, couldn't focus or get herself centered.

So, this morning, the workout was going to have to come off the top. Not yet five A.M. and she was up, washing her face, the bathroom door closed so as not to wake Alex, dressing in sweats for a trip to the hotel's gym. True, it wouldn't be the best workout this early, but anything was better than nothing. It wasn't as if she wanted to be up before dawn and breaking a sweat, it was a need. An addiction, maybe, but it was putting money in the bank: Today's deposit might not be as big as she'd like, but at least there would be something to draw on later if she needed it. And given how things were going, she would need it. So much for their vacation.

But in truth, she was a little excited. Carl Stewart was going to meet her in the hotel's gym. When she'd gone by his school and explained to him that her job was going to keep her from his class in the evenings, he'd offered to meet her for private sessions, and it turned out he was an early riser.

She'd laughed at that. "Ah. One of those people who run around throwing open windows, breathing deep the air, and smiling at the sunrise?"

"God, no," he'd said. "Just a slave to my internal clock. I'm a wren, been that way all my life. Up at four, to bed by nine or ten, no help for it. I have learned to make the best of it. I usually get my workout done in the morning, though. Not a lot else one can do when most of the rest of the world is still beddy-bye."

"Well, in that case, I'd love to train with you."

"There's a decent gym in your hotel," he'd said. "Save you a taxi ride to the school."

"And cost you one," she'd said.

"Not really. I have a car. And it's not all that far from where I live. I have a flat in Knightsbridge."

"Knightsbridge? That's a pretty nice area, isn't it? We drove through there. By Hyde Park?"

He looked embarrassed. "Yes, well, my parents got a bit of an inheritance from my grandfather on my mother's side, and they have a small family business that does all right."

As she headed for the hotel's gym through the quiet and empty hall, Toni grinned to herself. Before the computers had gone south, she'd checked out the real estate in the area called Knightsbridge. Flats went for the equivalent of half a million U.S. dollars. Houses started around three million and went up. There was a four-bedroom semidetached house — what they called a double condo in the States — for seven million. And offers had been made on most of the listings already.

Apparently the Stewart family business was doing all right indeed.

Carl was waiting in the gym, which was in itself interesting, since you supposedly needed an electronic keycard to be admitted. Toni inserted her own card into the lock and went through the heavy glass doors. They were the only two people there.

"Good morning," he said. He seemed too awake and cheerful for this hour.

"Morning."

He was warming up and stretching, and she joined him. The gym had several weight-stack machines, a stair-stepper, an elliptical walker, and a treadmill, all of which were equipped with the latest VR interfaces. There was an aerobics area in front of a mirrored wall opposite, a twelve-by-twelve-foot square. No mats, but the carpet was padded enough, and there was more than enough room for two people to practice silat.

Ten minutes later, they were ready to begin. "Shall we do djurus for a few minutes?" he asked.

She nodded. That was how she always began her practice. The short dances were the basis for everything else. All of the combat moves could be found in the djurus, if you knew how to look.

For a long time, Toni had practiced the Bukti dances, the eight basic and slimmed-down djurus, before she began the Serak moves; lately, however, she had been skipping straight ahead to the parent art. Bukti Negara was still used in a lot of places as a kind of test, to see if a student was serious about training. If, after a couple of years practicing the simpler stuff, a student was still hanging around, then she could be introduced to the more complex and demanding forms. Serak, so the story went, had been invented by a man of the same name in Indonesia. Serak, or Sera, also known as Ba Pak — The Wise — was Javanese and had been a formidable fighter, despite having only one arm and a clubfoot. That the man could function at all was noteworthy; that he had developed a martial art that made him equal or better as a fighter against other trained men who had all their limbs was truly amazing.

After ten minutes of djurus, Carl stopped. "Want to work some combinations?"

"Sure."

Once again, Toni thrilled to the knowledge that Carl was a superior player. None of her attacks and counterattacks got through. He blocked them effortlessly, it seemed to her, always keeping the centerline. She had to work hard to keep his second and third series of counterpunches and kicks from landing, especially the sneaky rising punch, a strike that wanted to come under a high-line defense but over the low-line block. She managed to stop him from connecting solidly with her, but he brushed her chest once, and another time tapped her on the chin. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough for her to realize he could have tagged her if he'd wanted.

This was great. Just what she needed.

He was showing her a take-down he liked, they were pressed together, her groin against his thigh, his right hand on her butt, levering for a hip sweep, when she caught a glimpse of somebody watching them from the hall. She didn't have time to look as Carl completed the throw, taking out her leg and dropping her to the carpet, following up with a kick and punch.

When she got to her feet, the watcher in the hall was gone. Probably a bellboy delivering somebody's breakfast.

"Again?" Carl asked.

"Yes." She grinned. This was really great.

She stepped in with a punch.

Alex felt a sour pain in his belly, a churning, twisted feeling. He had felt it before and he knew it for what it was: jealousy. He had watched them together in the workout room, Toni and the English silat instructor, seen them glued together, the man's hand on her ass. Yeah, sure, it was part of the deal, he knew enough of the art to know that, but still it bothered him as he hurried down the hall toward their room. She hadn't seen him, and he didn't want her to know he'd been there. Normally, he'd have been asleep at this hour, but he'd woken up as she shut the door on her way out and couldn't drift back off. So he'd gotten up, thrown on some clothes, and gone to watch them work out. Maybe he could learn something, he'd figured.

Yeah, right. He'd learned how to feel up somebody's butt.

He knew he was being unreasonable. It wasn't the man's hands on Toni that bothered him as much as how much she was obviously enjoying herself. Probably it was just the silat, being able to work out with a guy as good as Stewart was. Probably. But he couldn't get rid of a nagging worry: What if it was more? He and Toni hadn't been getting along that well in the last couple of weeks, that business about not sending her on assignment and all. Maybe she was interested in the big Englishman in some way other than as a sparring partner?

Yeah, okay, she said she loved him. But Michaels's ex-wife had said that, too. Her reasons for the divorce had to do with his career, with him being gone all the time, not there for her or their daughter, but she had once loved him and now she didn't. Maybe she even hated him, after he punched out her new boyfriend.

He reached his room, carded the lock, stepped inside.

He didn't need this, no way, no how, not given the other crap falling from the sky right now. Why couldn't life be simple? Why was it that every time things seemed to be rolling along smoothly, something always popped up in the road ahead, puncturing tires, sending his happy trip skidding and slewing off the pavement?

And why did it always have to be so damned emotional?

The way he'd been raised, a man didn't walk around with his heart on his sleeve, whining and blubbering about his problems. His father had been career Army, and Michaels had never once seen the old man cry, not even when his dog had been run over. The old man hadn't had a lot of deep conversations with his son, but one of the deepest had been about what men did and did not do: You took a hit, you sucked it up and you kept going. You never let anybody know they'd gotten to you. If it's killing you, you smile. That keeps your enemy off balance.

As an educated man raised in a society where emotions other than laughter or anger were now okay for men, Michaels knew he didn't need to hold himself so tight, that it was no sin to feel things, but those old tapes from his childhood were hard to get past. Knowing it was okay to let go intellectually was not the same as being able to actually do it.

It wasn't just his career that had killed his marriage. That don't-show-emotions lesson had been part of the problem with his ex-wife, he knew. And now it seemed to be part of the problem with Toni.

What to do about it?

He shook his head. He couldn't deal with this now. He had a job, a nut with some magical computer gear killing people, bringing the world more grief. He had to deal with his problems the way the samurai warrior Musashi had spoken of it: When faced with ten thousand, you fight them one at a time — the most dangerous ones first.

Of course you need to be pretty damned quick to beat ten thousand, and best he get back to it right now. His emotional life would just have to wait.

He left a note for Toni, then called for a cab to take him to MI-6.

Chapter 24

It was a beautiful, sunny morning, no wind, a perfect day to throw. Tyrone glanced at his watch. Ten A.M. Where was Nadine? She was supposed to meet him at the soccer field at — wait, there she was, coming around the gym, a backpack slung over one shoulder. She saw him, grinned, and waved.

"Hey, Tyrone!"

He waved back.

There were a couple of guys practicing at the goal on the south end of the field, so they headed for the north goal, then unpacked their gear. Tyrone had brought four of his favorite 'rangs, along with pixie dust and his timer; Nadine had three 'rangs, some finger dip wind-check, and a stopwatch.

The watch was odd-looking. It was an analog, round, big, silvery.

"Wow, where'd you get that?"

"My dad bought it on a trip to Russia," she said. "You hit this button to start it, same button to stop, the big sweep hand gives you seconds, the little inner dial gives you minutes. Doesn't use batteries."

She handed it to him and he looked at it.

"Solar-powered?" He didn't see a cell.

"No, an internal wind-up spring. Good for, like, hours, then you wind it again."

"Exemplary. I got a radio like that, you crank it, it plays for an hour, never needs to be charged."

"My dad says we could save a lot of dump space for batteries if we used more springs and gravity-powered devices," she said.

"Yeah. It's the next surge."

They warmed up, rolled their shoulders and waved their arms back and forth, shook out their hands, something Tyrone had learned from watching the older throwers. There were special stretching exercises, too, to keep the muscles of the shoulders and back limber. He'd seen articles on the net about serious boomerangers who had torn ligaments and stuff by throwing too hard without warming up first, and he didn't want to put himself out of commission that way. Of course, most of the guys who hurt themselves were old — in their twenties and thirties.

Nadine went to take a few practice throws, and he watched her carefully. She was in good shape — you could see that vein in her upper arm — and she had excellent form when she threw, she used her whole body and not just her arm, what you were supposed to do. You could learn a lot watching somebody good work.

They'd been throwing for about half an hour, getting to the point where they could do some serious MTA stuff, when Tyrone saw three or four people watching them from across the field, standing in the shade of a sycamore tree by the fence. That happened a lot when he was throwing, and usually he didn't pay much attention, since if you took your gaze off your 'rang for a second, it might disappear. He knew too many guys who had lost a bright orange boomerang on a newly trimmed field, poof, just vanished. Sometimes they angled in and somehow managed to bury themselves in the grass just enough so you couldn't see them; sometimes they just… vanished. He had lost a red quad-blade once on a golf course where the grass was like half a centimeter high, no way, but there it was.

It took only one quick look to see that one of the watchers was Belladonna Wright.

He jerked his gaze back to his 'rang, found it floating toward him about thirty meters out, and stayed with it until it came close enough to catch. He managed to trap the 'rang without dropping it, but he was rattled.

Though he was trying hard not to look at Bella, Nadine picked up on it.

"Well, well. Looks like that old fire might not be out after all, hey, Ty?"

"What?"

"You and sweetie pie over there under the tree. You kinda acted like you didn't know her real well, but from what I hear, you and she spent some quality time together."

"So what if we did?"

"Nothing, nothing, not my business. I just hate to see you get cooked, is all."

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, Tyrone, gimme a bye here. Pretties like that go through guys like toilet paper. Use 'em, flush 'em, there's plenty more where the last one came from.

She's got a string of guys waiting to run around behind her and kiss the ground she walks on, just to enjoy the view from there."

"Yeah? How would you know that?"

Nadine stared at the ground. "You hear stuff."

"Anything else you hear?"

"I'm not trying to start a fight."

"Could have fooled me."

She looked up, hefted her MTA. "I came to practice. You interested in that? Or you want to wait for Miss America to crook her finger so you can go running?"

"I don't go running. For your information, it was my idea to break up with Bella." Well, that wasn't strictly true, but he had opened the conversation that led to it. And when given the choice of being one of her string, he had told her he wasn't interested. Sort of.

"Good for you. You gonna throw?"

Tyrone glanced at Bella, then back at Nadine. "Yeah, I'm gonna throw. Get ready to start your watch, I'm gonna hang you out to dry."

"In your dreams."

She flashed him a small grin, and he returned it, but even as he did, he wondered about what she had said. What if Bella crooked her finger? If she waved him over, told him she wanted him to drop by and sit on her couch and kiss him like she had kissed him before, would he go running?

No way. No. Fucking. Way.

Easy enough to say that when he was pretty sure it wasn't gonna happen. But if it actually did, would he drop everything and trot over?

That was a hard one. He didn't want to think too much about that one.

He gathered himself for the throw. Three steps: one, two, three!

The boomerang soared high into the air, an artificial bird climbing for the sun. And it was gonna be a long hang time, too. He could tell. That ought to shut Nadine up about whether he'd come to throw.

Flying the big jet wasn't a problem for the Net Force pilot, and landing it manually wasn't, either, assuming the weather in England wasn't so foul they needed a ground beacon to locate the airport. The 747's self-contained instruments weren't affected by the international snafu that had ensnarled the major computer systems. But trying to land in heavy traffic at Heathrow or Gatwick without some help from the ATCs on the ground was not at the top of any pilot's list.

"No way in hell, sir," the pilot had put it to Howard.

Fortunately, there were military bases that were self-contained in the U.K., at least insofar as flight operations went, and they could put the big bird down at one of these, even though the wait would be fairly long. Most of the still-operational bases had been hauling in civilian planes affected by the snafu, or allowing takeoffs and landings by those nonmilitary aircraft that simply had to fly: hospital planes, those moving organs for transplants, or assorted heads of state. They might be stacked up a while, waiting to land.

Fine, he had been stacked up before.

Fortunately, most military organizations were, by their nature, paranoid, and few of them put all their eggs in one basket. That half the planet's computer systems had been screwed up was bad, but not so bad that it totally paralyzed the world's armies and navies. Good soldiers always worried about such things, and good soldiers could usually convince the bad ones to have some kind of backup plan. Looked as if that chore might get easier after this, too.

They could have turned the 747 back and landed in the States, but Howard wasn't interested in letting his quarry get away again, not if they could help it. The good thing was, if they were having problems traveling, so would Ruzhyo. And he didn't think the assassin would get far on foot. Although tracking him without computers might be something of a problem itself, it would be easier if he sat still for a while.

Julio drifted down the aisle and stopped next to his seat.

"Colonel."

"Sergeant."

"You still think we can collect this boy?"

"Oh, we'll get him." Howard mentioned his reasoning.

Fernandez laughed. "Begging the colonel's pardon, but bullshit. If the guy's IQ didn't drop by fifty points when he landed, he's plenty smart enough to figure out how to rent a car or boat or even a plane from somebody and get out of England. He waves a handful of that funny Euro money at some college kid or poor fisherman or broke pilot with an ultralight, and he's got wheels or floats or wings. I'd guess the Frogs or the Spanish or anybody else across a body of water from Jolly Olde are gonna be busy trying to stop opportunistic crooks trying to smuggle trains or steamships past 'em while the computers are whacked out. His chances of getting nailed in all the hubbub are probably so close to zero as to practically be zero."

"You're assuming he wants to leave England that bad," Howard said. "Why should he? He doesn't know we're on his tail. He probably thinks he's gotten away clean."

"Would you assume that, were you in his shoes?"

Howard grinned. "Hell, no."

"Me, neither."

"Maybe he won't want to risk it," Howard said.

"I don't think this guy worries an awful lot about risk, given what we've seen out of him so far, John."

Howard nodded. That was true enough. And there was nothing to be done about it.

Julio said, "But, shoot, we could get lucky. He might step off a curb and get hit by a double-decker bus or something. Be waiting for us in a hospital somewhere, nothing but a tongue depressor to fight us with when we show up. Course, with our luck so far, he'd kill a couple of us with it, and wouldn't that look good on the obituary page? 'Assassin Kills Net Force Personnel! It was depressing, Sergeant Julio Fernandez said.' "

"I can always count on you to cheer me up, Sergeant."

"I do what I can, sir."

Michaels sat hunched over a stack of hardcopy, reading that instead of using the computer. It was slow going. Toni had arrived, but left again to go collect some material from a satellite recon site that still had a viable uplink. They didn't want to risk sending the stuff from there to here, even with protected landlines. It was more reliable for somebody to collect it physically.

His neck and upper back were stiff and sore. Part of that was probably from being stuck in a chair reading for hours; part of it was tension from all the other crap going on in his head. Megan and the private eye, Toni, the whole ugly situation with this madman screwing with the world.

"Knock, knock?"

Angela Cooper came in, tapping at the door frame as she did so. She wore a dark blue blazer and a matching short skirt, with a paler blue blouse. She closed the door behind her. "How goes the war, Alex?"

"Our side is still losing."

"We've gotten a bunch of systems back on-line," she said. "We're recovering. So far, no permanent damage to sensitive material."

"That's something."

She moved to stand behind him and looked over his shoulder.

"Statistical analysis of transcontinental telephonic transmissions? My. This must be fascinating reading."

"Oh, yeah, right up there with freshman philosophy papers on German existentialists written in Chinese by Bantu bushmen."

She laid on hand on his shoulder. "Oh, dear. You're like a rock."

"I've been more relaxed," he admitted.

"You should let me work on you." She put her other hand on his other shoulder and started to knead the muscles. He had a moment of alarm. He should not allow this. But — mmm, it felt good. Her hands were much stronger than he would have thought.

"You don't have to do that." Weak. Not the same as telling her to quit.

"I don't mind. It's one of my few talents. My mother was a therapist for a time. She knew some of the more esoteric elements of massage: reiki, shiatsu, Aston-Patterning. I picked up some of it along the way."

God, but that felt good. He could feel the knots in his traps. It also felt as if his head might just nod forward and fall off his neck if she kept this up. It was not sexual, but it was certainly sensual.

"You really ought to lie down to get the full benefit," she said. She continued to work her fingers into his neck and upper back, digging in with her thumbs, working in elliptical spirals.

"However, the couch is too soft, the desk too short. But the carpet is clean. Lie on the floor, on your stomach, next to the desk there."

Like a man in a trance, Michaels obeyed. He hadn't realized just how tight he was. She was finding spots in his muscles so hard they felt like ball bearings.

Facedown, he felt her straddle him, and he opened his eyes enough to see her short skirt riding up as her knees pressed into his sides. Her butt was only lightly touching his, she wasn't putting very much weight onto him.

Oh, yes…

"It would be better with your shirt off, but perhaps we ought to wait on a more private setting for that. Wouldn't want tongues to wag."

The way Michaels felt with her working on his back, he didn't care if all the tongues in MI-6 wagged like a pack of starving dogs being offered liver treats. An involuntary moan escaped, pressed out of him when she dug the heel of one spiraling hand into the flesh over his right scapula.

It hurt, but it was a good hurt, he could feel himself loosening under the hard pressure.

She slid backward, hovered over his hamstrings, and leaned onto her hands against the small of his back. She pressed her thumbs into his buttocks, slid her fingers over his hips, circled to his back again.

Oh, man. He could get used to this.

Used to it? It could become an addiction.

It occurred to him after ten minutes or so that this would be the worst time in the world for Toni to come back. This would be difficult to explain. He should make her stop. Now.

But he didn't.

And Toni didn't come back, and after twenty minutes, Angela slid back up his body, did some stuff to his scalp, then climbed off him and stood.

He could barely move. He somehow managed to get to his feet.

She was flushed, had worked up a sweat, was glowing.

"Thank you. You just saved my life."

"It wasn't much, really. To do it right takes an hour, an hour and a half, and you have to work both sides, back and front. I have a massage table at home. Maybe you can drop by and let me give you the full treatment sometime."

A warning flash strobed his brain: Danger! Bad idea!

Then he thought about Toni and her silat workout. Stewart had put his hands all over Toni, hadn't he? What was the difference? It wasn't sex, it was harmless. It was… therapeutic.

"Yeah, maybe we could do that," he heard himself say.

She smiled at him and he smiled back.

"I must look awful, like an old sweaty cow," she said. "I must go and repair myself. See you later."

After she had gone, he found that a small bit of tension quickly returned, despite the skilled rubdown he had just gotten. It had nothing to do with work.

What, he wondered, are you getting yourself into here, Alex?

Chapter 25

Goswell sat in his study, in the good leather chair, and sipped at his iced gin. He sighed, and looked at the photographs for perhaps the tenth time. In this age of computer miracles, it was certainly possible to fake such things, he knew. An expert could easily put one man's face on another's body, could erase or add elements that never existed. He recalled seeing a movie once of Sir Winston Churchill — a damned fine PM, according to his father — seated next to the American President Abraham Lincoln, chatting away, when, in truth, the latter had been assassinated eight or ten years before Churchill had been born.

He shuffled the pictures. Yes, certainly it could be done, but in this case, he was just as certain that it had not been done. These were genuine enough, for the man who had taken them had not had a reason to fake them. There sat Peel, talking to Bascomb-Coombs, right there in a public eatery. Of course, Goswell thought, Peel was his security chief and Bascomb-Coombs one of his employees, and a valuable one, as well, so one could easily argue that such a meeting was well within the normal scope of Peel's duties. It was his job, after all, to keep tabs on such people, and talking to them directly was not out of the question.

Goswell took another swallow of his drink and looked at the grandfather clock. Nearly seven; supper would be ready soon.

No, Peel could certainly justify speaking with Bascomb-Coombs easily enough. The damning thing was, he had not done so. Nowhere in his reports was there any mention of such a meeting. Nor of the subsequent meetings. While not all such instances had been edited from the tally of his observations and actions, some of them certainly had been. There were other photographs.

Goswell shook his head. Damned bad show, this. Was he to believe that Peel's formerly faultless memory had begun to malfunction? And only in instances concerning Bascomb-Coombs? What a terrible world it had become when one had to have a trusted watcher himself being watched.

The question was, of course, what were these two about? That they were in league together certainly meant something.

Well. He had not gotten to be a general of industry without learning how to figure such things out.

He rattled the cubes in his nearly empty glass rather loudly.

"Milord? Another drink?"

"Yes, please. Oh, and Applewhite? See if you can find Major Peel, would you, and have him drop round after dinner?"

"Certainly, milord."

Goswell stared into the depths of the melting ice in his glass as Applewhite went to fetch more gin. He would take the quisling Peel's measure, one way or another. A damned shame, really. Good thing the boy's father was gone. It would break his heart to know his son had betrayed a trust.

A light rain had begun falling, and Ruzhyo figured this would be a perfect excuse.

It was Sunday, and in some cities that meant much of the commerce would be shut down, but not here in London. He caught a cab near the British Museum and gave the driver the address he wanted. It was not far from a shop on a side street near Regent's Park, a tiny slot of a storefront, long and narrow, that specialized in handcrafted umbrellas and canes. You could easily drop a couple of hundred in such a place on a handmade walking stick or bumbershoot, considerably more if you so wished. They were big on such things here, the accoutrements of a gentleman, and likely the shop could make ends meet just with such sales alone; however, there were other items to be had by a knowledgeable buyer.

The cab arrived a block from the destination. Ruzhyo paid the fare, reflexively gave enough of a tip so the hack wouldn't remember him as being either cheap or extravagant, and alighted from the taxi. The rain was coming down a little harder, and Ruzhyo made certain he didn't appear to notice the man following him as he walked. Not that his shadow was totally inept, but it would take somebody far better to tail him unnoticed once he was looking for such a thing.

When he arrived at the shop he wanted, he made a show of looking irritated at the weather, shook the water from his windbreaker, and offered what he hoped would seem a spur-of-the-moment decision to duck into the place.

It would all be for nothing if Peel knew what the shop's merchandise included, but unless things had changed recently, the Brits did not have a clue about the umbrella store.

The meeting with Peel had been interesting. His claim that he had spotted Ruzhyo by having every passport picture of every foreigner entering the country compared to a list of known agents seemed far-fetched, but Peel had managed to spot him somehow. And he had managed to put a watcher on him. Perhaps it was just luck. Or perhaps Peel's claim was true. Either way, the offer of employment had been forthcoming. Ruzhyo hadn't been all that interested in work, but then again, it wasn't as if he was in a hurry, and Peel could make it easier for him to travel, especially given all the computer problems of late. A short stopover might be to his benefit. The assignment, to stand by for a possible elimination of an English lord who just happened to be Peel's employer was intriguing, although Ruzhyo doubted he would actually attempt the deletion.

Peel's flimsy explanation as to why he couldn't do the job himself or have one of his men do it wasn't fooling anybody. It was obvious that he needed a scapegoat, a foreign agent who could be blamed for the assassination, and who better than a sneaky CIS former Spezsnaz killer? One who might well be shot full of holes himself in the aftermath of the killing while trying to escape, thus tying up all loose ends?

Ruzhyo allowed himself a small smile as the umbrella shop clerk took notice of him and nodded. Were he Peel, that's how he might set it up. Hire an expendable shooter, then delete him once the job was done; all very neat, if not terribly smart. Sooner or later, somebody would get around to asking why a man on the run from U.S. authorities would bother to stop off for a bit of murder in the U.K., motive being a necessary part of such a thing. And even the plodding British authorities would turn over every rock in sight investigating the murder of such a highly regarded man. They were still very class-conscious here. But the Brits were short-sighted about some things, always had been. Had they been paying attention, they'd probably still rule most of the world. Hubris did awful things to an empire. Likely it was that Peel had a touch of that himself.

"May I help you, sir?"

"I need a special umbrella. One with more… heft than the ordinary."

The clerk's smile never wavered. "Ah, yes. I'll have the manager, Mr. O'Donnell, right out."

The clerk disappeared into a door behind the counter. Ruzhyo pretended to browse. There were fantastic handles on some of the canes and umbrellas, made of ivory or exotic woods, carved in fanciful shapes. Here was a tiger, there a snake, over here, a nude woman arched backward in a graceful half circle.

"Good afternoon, sir. I'm Mr. O'Donnell. I understand you need a special umbrella?"

Ruzhyo nodded at the tall, sandy-haired man in the dark suit. "Yes."

"Might I ask who recommended our shop to you?"

"That would be Colonel Webley-Scott."

"Ah, I see. And how is the colonel these days?"

The identity code was the same. Ruzhyo said, "Still dead, last I heard."

The manager smiled and nodded. "If you will step this way, sir?"

"I have a tail. No connection to you."

"Not to worry. He won't see through the window unless he has X-ray vision. Is he likely to come in?"

"I doubt that he is that stupid."

"Well, if he does, he'll see you come out of the door to the WC."

Ruzhyo followed O'Donnell through the water closet and through a hidden door to a small private room. There was a tall, green, antique safe on claw feet in one corner. As the manager opened the safe, he said, "Would you be wanting something edged or projectile, sir?"

"Do you have a multiple-projectile model?"

"We have. A five-shooter. Small-caliber, I'm afraid, only.22."

"That will do."

"Here we are, then."

He offered what appeared to be a standard umbrella to Ruzhyo, with the J-shaped wooden handle perhaps a hair thicker and heavier than normal.

"Handle unscrews here…. Inside, you'll notice the back of the cylinder. It's a revolver, you see."

Ruzhyo looked at the five small holes in the tiny cylinder inside the umbrella shaft. The firing pin and rest of the action was in the removed J-section. Ingenious.

"One puts the shells in like so, threads the handle back on until it locks, thus. Trigger unfolds from the handle, thus, use this little notch, much like a penknife blade."

He used his thumbnail to bring the flush-mounted lever out.

"It is double-action only, of course, and there aren't any sights, but a man proficient with firearms can point-shoot it rather well. Barrel is rifled steel, as good as most commercial long arms. The end cap is a soft, rubbery material, no impediment to the bullet if you don't have time to remove it, and actually offers a bit of sound-damping, though it must be replaced after several shots. The weapon comes with spare end caps, of course."

Ruzhyo took the disguised carbine, hefted it. Normally, he did not like to go about armed if he did not specifically need a weapon. This was not a normal time.

"You have fired it?"

"I have."

"And is there a place where I can test it?"

O'Donnell nodded, approving. "That box over there. It's full of baffles and has a steel backstop." He wasn't offended. Only a fool would trust his life to a weapon he had not personally tested to see if it would work.

"Ammunition?"

"I have some Stingers, solids and hollow-points."

"Excellent," he said. "How much?"

"Two thousand."

"Done."

O'Donnell smiled.

The tail was across the street in a sandwich shop, watching through the somewhat foggy window. A young man, hair cut short, who could have been Huard's brother from his general look. The rain was still coming down, so Ruzhyo held his newly acquired and fully loaded short carbine up and utilized the secondary function. The black silk canopy expanded crisply on its titanium struts and locked into place. The thing had fired five rounds without any problem. It worked fine as an umbrella, too. A wonderful and deadly toy. Most people did not realize that an ultra-high-velocity.22 solid bullet fired from a long barrel would punch right through standard police-issue class II Kevlar body armor. Police agencies understandably did not like to talk about such things.

Ruzhyo smiled to himself as he walked away from the shop.

Peel would get him weapons, of course, but it was much better to have a hidden trump, just in case.

Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Chapter 26

The heat and dampness were oppressive, and the sour odor of the tiger's spoor permeated the leaden air. He was close; the tiger and the scent of his scat were mixed in with the stink of Jay's own fear.

Jay and his native guide followed the footprints across an open stretch of ground, easily seen now in the soft dirt. No doubt of it, no way to mistake the trail. It led across the open stretch into a dense patch of brush: fatboled trees, short, thick bushes, a bordering stand of big bamboo.

Jay shifted his sweaty grip on the Streetsweeper, took a long and ragged deep breath, and exhaled slowly. The tiger had gone into that thicket, and if Jay wanted it, he was going to have to go in after it. The prospect filled him with a dread as cold as a bucket of liquid nitrogen, a fright bordering on the edge of stark, gibbering terror.

Jay stopped walking. What he wanted to do was bail from this scenario, pull off his gear, and shut down his computer. He wanted to find a South Sea island somewhere in Real Time, to go there and lie in the sunshine on an empty beach for a month, to do nothing but bake and drink something cold with rum and coconut in it. The last thing on earth he wanted to do was traipse into that fecund wall of jungle ahead, stalking the thing that had crashed his wetware and put the fear of death into his mind. And if he did it, it might well be the last thing he ever did.

But he had to go. If he didn't, he might as well hang it up as a player; if he didn't find and destroy this beast, he was as good as brain-dead.

He took another deep breath and let it out. "Let's go," he said.

They were almost to the wood when his native guide said, "Sahib! Behind us!"

Jay spun and saw the tiger charging them, impossibly fast.

He had maybe half a second, and he knew it wouldn't be enough. "Bail!" he screamed.

Jay fell out of VR into his apartment, heart pounding, the panic filling him. The tiger! The tiger! He couldn't even breathe.

At his core, he knew he had to go back before it got away. He had to go back. He wanted to scream, to cry, to run, anything but what he had to do.

Instead, he said, "Resume!"

Jay arrived in time to see the huge tiger sinking its terrible fangs into his detection program — the native guide — mangling it into a bloody ruin.

Poor Mowgli.

Jay snapped the shotgun up as the tiger realized he had returned. The great beast coughed, roared, and spun to face him. No hesitation, it charged—

— Jay stood his ground, aimed—

— fifty feet away, forty feet, thirty—

— he squeezed the trigger. The shotgun bucked against his shoulder, lifted from the recoil. He fired again, too fast, too high—

— but the first blast hit the charging monster. It screamed in surprise and pain, sheared off, and ran for the forest. Jay saw blood on one of the tiger's shoulders as it wheeled around and ran.

He had hit it! It was fleeing! It wasn't invincible!

A surge of triumph washed his fear away. Jay had faced it down, shot it, driven it off!

The victory was short-lived, though.

Now what he had was a wounded man-eater hiding in the bush. That wasn't going to make things any easier.

That didn't matter. He had to go after it, and he didn't have time to call up another warning program. He had to go now!

Jay ran for the jungle.

Peel stood by the greenhouse, wishing he had a cigarette. He had quit smoking years ago, a matter of discipline more than anything, a test of his will. Everybody knew it was bad for you, but as a soldier, he had always expected he would die in the field somewhere; he didn't expect to live long enough for the fags to get him. Besides, his grandfather on his mother's side had smoked two packs a day for almost seventy years, and had died at ninety-four from injuries sustained in a fall, so a lot of it was genetics. Drank whiskey every day right until the end, too. No, Peel had stopped because he wanted to prove to himself that he could. What was the old joke? Quitting smoking is easy, hell, I've done it a dozen times.

The rain had stopped; there was a patch of clear sky directly overhead, and the gathering darkness sported a few stars. It was quiet, calm, with no signs of any problems from his troops around the estate. Goswell had called him in for a visit; they'd had a pleasant drink. There was all that money sitting in a bank. Bascomb-Coombs was about his business, and if it went as well as it had gone thus far, Peel would be rich and powerful beyond belief in the not-too-distant future. Especially since, once the scientist's plans came to fruition, Peel planned to take him out and take over himself.

On the face of it, Peel didn't see how things could be much better. However…

Something was wrong.

There was nothing to point a finger at, no focus for his unease, but on some instinctual level, he felt it. There was a danger lurking here somewhere. Perhaps a cigarette wouldn't help him figure out what it was, but smoking had always settled his thoughts, had given him time to ponder problems. Like Sherlock Holmes with his pipe, perhaps.

Well. He wasn't about to fire up again because of some vague disquiet. A walk around the grounds might serve as well, and he was trying that, but so far, nothing concrete had loomed. It would present itself, if indeed it existed, in due time. It always did. The only question about that was, would he figure it out in time to marshal his defenses against it?

Whatever it was. There was the question.

Tyrone walked down the hall toward his first class, threading his way through the other students, each hurrying toward his or her own rendezvous with education.

"Hey, Ty."

He stopped and turned, recognizing the voice from those two words.

Belladonna Wright.

"Hey, Bella."

She wore a tightly wrapped blue dress that fit like spray paint and stopped a foot above her knees, matching thick-soled sandals that added four inches to her height, and she had her long hair up in some kind of curly do that made her look taller still. Two steps and he could touch her.

"How you doin'?"

He shrugged. "Okay. How about you?"

"Okay. I saw you out with your boomerang the other day."

"Yeah." Why was she talking to him? After he had seen her kissing that slackbrain at the mall and called her on it, she had dumped him flatter than two-dee. They hadn't spoken since. And here she was, passing the time of day like nothing had happened.

"Haven't seen you at the mall lately," she said. She smiled.

"Haven't been there much."

"You should check out the new food court. It's terrifaboo."

"Yeah, maybe I will."

She flashed another of her perfect smiles at him. Took a breath deep enough to push her chest out a little. A wonderful, beautiful, fabulous chest. He swallowed dryly.

"Well. See you around," she said.

"Yeah," was all he could manage.

She walked off, queen of all she passed. From the back, she was just as gorgeous.

Tyrone's brain hurt. What was that all about? She smiled at him, practically invited him to the mall, acted like she was glad to see him! Last time they had talked, months ago, she had verbally kicked him in the nuts when he'd called her on having other boyfriends, told him to lose her number! What the hell was going on?

The bell went off, and Tyrone jerked himself out of his trance and hustled his butt to his class. He wished his dad was in town. Maybe he would know what this meant.

Michaels suddenly realized how quiet things had gotten at the office, and he looked at the computer's clock. Lord, it was almost midnight.

He was bushed. Sitting hunched over the computer all day had knotted him up again, and his mind was foggy. Most of the British computer systems had come back on-line, but other European nations were still having big problems. Toni had taken the Chunnel train to Paris to coordinate infoflow with the French authorities. She wouldn't be back until Tuesday evening.

He had been making stupid mistakes for the last hour, words on the holoproj running together and not making sense. Time to shut it down and get back to his hotel.

He slipped his windbreaker on — what was it somebody had called it here, a windcheater? — and left the office. Probably wouldn't be a lot of taxis standing out front. He pulled his virgil to call for one as he headed for the building's exit.

"You work late hours," Angela said from behind him.

Michaels turned. "Yeah, well, you're still here, aren't you?"

"Just leaving. You need a ride?"

"I was just calling a cab." He waved the virgil. "I wouldn't want to put you out."

"No trouble, really," she said. "It's practically on the way to my flat."

"In that case, okay, sure."

London was a big city, it never shut down, and even at midnight the streets were still clogged with traffic. There were twelve? fifteen million people here? Too many in too small a space.

"Making much progress?" she asked as they wound their way past a pub that spilled laughing patrons onto the sidewalk.

"Not much."

"Us, either," she said. "Much of the British grid seems to be back up, but the rest of the world is still putting pieces back together." She waved at the happy-looking people coming out of the pub. "Fancy a pint and some late supper?"

As she asked, Michaels realized that he was hungry; he'd had a sandwich at his desk at noon, nothing since. "I could eat."

"There's a nice quiet place not far from my flat. They serve decent fish and chips."

Again, the little danger signal cheeped in his mind, but he was tired and hungry and he didn't feel like bothering with it. What harm could there be in a beer and a little fried food?

"Sure, why not?"

The pub was moderately full, but as she'd said, fairly quiet. They ordered fish and French fries — chips — and took pint glasses of beer to their table to wait for the food.

He took a couple of swallows of his beer, dark brew called Terminator Stout. She nodded at his glass. "Came from America originally, that," she said.

He looked at the beer. "Really?"

"Indeed. Some microbrewery on the West Coast. Chap from London passing through tasted it, liked it, started importing it. Only taken a couple hundred years for you Americans to produce decent beer. Another hundred years or so, you might make a decent roadster."

"I beg your pardon," he said. "Chevrolet did that with the Corvette in the 1950s."

"Know about cars, do you?"

"A little."

"Well, it didn't take them long to muck it up, the Corvette, did it? It might have started out okay, but after a few years, it ballooned into a monster, didn't it? Bigger body, bigger engine, electronic this and that, until it was as huge as a town car and cost more than a Cadillac sedan."

He grinned. "Well, yes, that's true."

"Now, you take a classic '50s or '70s MG," she began.

He snorted, cutting her off. "Please. Take it to the dump. They should have offered the thing with a mechanic as standard equipment. Your average vintage MG spent more time in the shop being tuned than it ever did on the road."

"Well, all right, some of them were a bit finicky, but that's a small price to pay for the driving experience."

"Ha! You mean the towing experience. You tell the Automobile Club you own an MG, they won't even take your phone calls."

She smiled at him.

The food arrived, and the smell of the batter-fried halibut and potatoes enveloped them in a wonderful aroma. He wasn't just hungry, he was starving!

After ten minutes of chowing down and a second round of beers, Michaels felt much better. This was nice, having a late dinner and enjoying a conversation not connected to work. They talked about Japanese and Korean roadsters, the new South African Trekker, and he told her about the Prowler and Miata he had restored.

Next thing he knew, it was two A.M.

"We probably should get going," he said. "Work and all."

"How is the muscle tension?" she asked.

"Not as bad as it was."

She put her hand on his neck, slid it lightly down to his shoulder. "You're still tight as a violin string. She paused. Said, softly, "My flat is just up the road and around the corner. Would you like me to give you a massage?"

Maybe it was because he was so tired. Or maybe it was the two pints of beer and the good food. Or maybe it was because she was really a handsome and intelligent woman who obviously enjoyed his company.

Whatever the reason, Michaels nodded at her. "Yes. I'd like that."

Chapter 27

Jay moved with all the stealth he could manage, which wasn't very much, considering how rattled he was and the terrain through which he moved. Tracking the beast was not a problem; the brush was trampled and smeared with blood, and the trail led Jay in a straight line, a sign of animal panic. The tiger ran straight away, making no attempt at stealth.

Or so it seemed. It had sneaked up behind him once before, and Jay wasn't going to get caught unaware again. He kept a constant watch, head swiveling as if he were watching a tennis match in the round.

At the base of what looked to be a huge boablike tree, the blood trail disappeared.

Jay looked up.

Thirty feet above the ground, the tiger coughed and charged down the tree trunk, ran against gravity as if he was on level terrain!

Jay didn't think. He whipped the shotgun up, spot-welded his cheek to the weapon, and fired. He recovered from the recoil using his whole body and fired again.

The tiger fell off the tree. Jay dodged to his right, swung the gun around at waist level, and pulled the trigger as the thing hit the ground hard, five feet away, hard enough to shake Jay where he crouched, gun blasting.

He lost count of how many times he shot. It seemed like one continuous roar—boomboomboomboomboom—! The coppery smell of tiger's blood rose and joined the stink of burned gunpowder, and when he stopped shooting, the ground was littered with green and red plastic shotgun shells, at least a dozen of them, maybe more.

Now, the tiger wasn't even twitching.

Now, Jay drew a shuddery, deep breath, his first in a while.

The animal that had clawed his brain apart was dead. He had killed it.

Even as he bent to examine it, though, he knew it wasn't the thing he sought. Oh, yeah, it had attacked and damaged him, but now that he had killed it, he knew this was but a security program, not the creature that had ripped open the unbreakable cages of the world's most advanced computer systems with impossible strength. It was the most dangerous thing Jay had ever faced in VR, but this was just a watchbeast, put in the jungle to take care of snoopers, nowhere near the power of what had casually left it behind.

The real monster was still out there. And Jay knew this shotgun wouldn't slow it down if it spotted him.

Jesus.

It was three A.M., and Toni couldn't sleep. The big bed in the French hotel was comfortable enough, the room insulated and high enough above the city streets so the traffic noise was but a quiet drone. She'd had a fairly quiet day, gotten a lot of material collected and assembled, and had a delicious, fattening supper. She'd even gotten a workout in the hotel's gym and spent half an hour in the spa, letting the roiling hot water bubble and relax her. She should be conked out like a baby.

Her mind was buzzing, and the sense of disquiet she felt might be due to the work, but it wasn't that. No, it was Alex. Something was wrong between them, and she didn't know what it was. He was upset with her, she could feel it, even though he denied it, and she didn't know what to do about it.

Oh, she had tried to find out: Alex? Is everything okay?

Yep, everything is fine.

You sure? Have I said or done anything to upset you?

No, Toni, everything is okay. I'm just tired, is all.

Then he'd flashed her a tight smile that looked sincere but was hollow.

How could you get past that? How many times could you ask without being a nag? Once you'd asked and been answered, how much could you harp on it? Wasn't it his responsibility? If he said everything was all right, didn't she have to accept that?

Well, with men, no. Not in her experience. They weren't wired the same way as women. They'd say one thing and mean something else entirely.

Who could she talk to about this? She had girlfriends who would listen and offer advice, back in the States. Or maybe she could call her mother. What was the time difference between Paris and the Bronx? Six hours? It would be nine o'clock at night there, Mama would probably be dozing out in front of the flatscreen TV by now. Besides, this wasn't really the kind of thing you talked about with Mama. She'd been dealing with Papa for so long there was only one way to do such things in her mind, and besides that, Toni doubted if Papa had ever voiced a complex emotional thought to anybody in his whole life: Whaddya, some kinda sissy goes around whining about your feelings? Geddoutta here.

No, she'd just have to deal with this on her own, somehow. When she got back to London, she'd find some time — would make some time — to sit down with Alex and get him to open up. They'd get it worked out. She loved him, he loved her. How hard could it be as long as they had that?

Angela's flat was one of a row on Denbigh Street, a small place, but very neat and clean: a sitting room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. And she did have a massage table set up in the small sitting room. Michaels remarked on that: Did she do so much massage that she left the table out all the time?

No, she'd said. She'd gotten it out and put it up just today.

A small alarm went off in his head. Uh-oh.

She handed him a bedsheet. "Take off your clothes and lie facedown," she said. "Cover up with this. I'll get out of my work clothes and put on something less constricting."

She moved off into the bedroom, and Michaels found himself standing in the apartment of an attractive women he barely knew, holding a folded sheet, contemplating the removal of his clothes.

This was a bad idea.

Then again, she did have a real massage table, and she did seem to know a lot about bodywork.

He blew out a deep breath. What the hell.

He stripped to his underwear — a pair of black silk bikini briefs Toni had bought for him — stretched out on the table facedown, and pulled the sheet over himself.

When Angela came back into the room, she wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a tank top.

Sweatpants. Sweatpants were good.

"Ready?"

"Sure."

She started by digging her elbow into his upper back, and after a couple of minutes, he relaxed into it. Some tiny part of him was maybe a little bit disappointed — it was going to be a massage — but the larger part of him felt relief. She was bright and beautiful, but his life was already complicated enough. A back rub wasn't something he had to lose any sleep over.

She spent about thirty minutes working on his back. She moved to his legs, and he felt himself tense a little, but Angela was matter-of-fact about it, pummeling his hamstrings hard enough to be slightly painful, uncovering one leg at a time and folding the sheet so that the rest of him was under the thin cloth.

She worked on his feet and calves, then moved to his butt, hands under the sheet. "This won't do," she said, and she peeled his briefs off, slid them quickly over his legs and his feet.

"Uh… Angela…?"

"Relax, Alex. I can't work the muscle properly if it's covered up."

He tried to relax, but with her fingers stroking his ass that was hard.

And, unfortunately, that soon wasn't the only thing hard about him.

But at least he was facedown, so that wasn't embarrassing, just a little uncomfortable.

After five minutes of kneading his buttocks, he was beginning to relax again when she said, "Okay, turn over."

"Excuse me?"

"The back is only half of you. I need to work the front."

Crap. How could he say this? About his, ah, current condition? "Uh, well, I, uh, well, turning over might be kind of, that is—"

"Got a bit excited? Don't worry about that, Alex. I've done this before. It happens all the time."

She lifted up the sheet. "Turn, I'll hold this."

He wasn't thrilled with the idea of rolling onto his back and showing her where his mind had gone. When she let go of the sheet, it was going to look like a tent. But all right, fine. He kept his eyes closed and rolled over.

"My. How lovely," she said.

He opened his eyes as Angela dropped the sheet to the floor and climbed onto the table to straddle him.

Her sweatpants were gone — how had she done that? — and she wasn't wearing anything under them. In another second, he was going to be wearing her, and he knew if that happened, his mind would shut down completely. He would be lost.

"Hey, Angela?"

"Mmm?"

"Look, I really can't do this."

"You obviously can. And certainly you want to. I can tell." She pointed at him.

"Yes. But the thing is, I can't. I'm involved."

"She'll never find out from me. Nobody will ever know."

He shook his head. "I'll know."

She leaned back, looked down at him. "You sure about this?"

He sighed. "Yeah."

Michaels came out of a troubled doze back in his room with the sound of his virgil playing "Bad to the Bone." Man, was that ever true.

Toni!

Oh, man!

He was in deep shit now.

The virgil kept telling him it was b-b-b-bad, and he got up and went to find it. Yeah, okay, he hadn't actually done anything, but he should never have gone to Angela's flat, he knew at the time it was wrong, and he had done it anyway. And if they could hang you for thinking, he'd be swinging by now. The last thing he wanted to do now was talk to anybody, and especially he did not want to talk to Toni.

He left the visual off. "Hello?"

"Hey, boss."

Jay Gridley. Thank God. "Jay. How are you?"

"Doing a lot better. I tracked down the security program that thumped my head and wrecked it."

"Congratulations."

"This is the easy part, boss. I still have to find the guy who created it. But it ought to be easier with this out of the way."

"Good."

"Uh, is, uh, Toni around?"

Michaels felt a cold hand squeeze his guts. "Ah, no. She's in Paris. Be back this afternoon."

"I'll give her a call, there's some stuff in her files here I need to access."

"Fine."

"How's London? You having a good time?"

Was he having a good time? Well, no, not exactly. He was busy becoming the biggest, unfaithful, lying turd in all the world. All right, technically he wasn't unfaithful, but it sure felt as if he had been. He'd been inches away from it.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm having a great time. Talk to you later, Jay. Keep me advised."

He shut off his virgil. Jesus Christ. How could he have been so fucking stupid? A few drinks, some good food, and a massage didn't sound so awful. His neck had been sore, right? Taking off your clothes in front of a doctor or a massage therapist, there wasn't any harm in that. But the thought that it might continue into something had rattled around in his head, he had to admit it. It was only by the slimmest margin that he could claim any kind of victory, and it felt more like a loss.

He was going to have to tell Toni about it, of course.

The question was: How was he going to tell Toni? Oh, by the way, while you were in Paris? I dropped round Angela's place, took off my clothes, let her rub my back, and almost let her rub my front?

When was that going to come up in conversation?

Man.

Chapter 28

Goswell glanced over the top of his Times at Sir Harold Bellworth, who sat brooding at his cigar, which had gone out from lack of attention. The old boy had called for Paddington to fetch him another match, and Goswell figured this was a good time to broach the subject he had in mind.

"I say, Harry?"

Bellworth looked up from his dead cigar. "What? Eh?"

"You recall that business you had with that… Armenian fellow a few months ago?"

Bellworth snorted. "I could hardly forget that! Blasted damned rogue, the man was, mucking about in my business!"

"I heard he met with an… unfortunate accident, the Armenian."

"I should say he did. Fell off of a platform in the tube station and was squashed by a train. Served him right, and no loss to the world at all, damned foreigner!"

Goswell waited as Paddington returned. Paddington struck a match against the box, let it flare, then bent and held it so Bellworth could rekindle his Cuban torpedo. A cloud of fragrant smoke billowed as the old boy puffed the cigar back to life.

"Decent of you, Paddington," Bellworth said.

Paddington moved the ash tray a hair closer — Bellworth was notorious for flicking the cigar residue onto the rug. "Not at all, sir. Will there be anything else?"

"No, no, this will do it."

"Very good, sir."

Paddington ghosted away.

Bellworth looked back to Goswell. "Why on earth are you bringing up such a distasteful subject, Gossie?"

"Well, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I have a somewhat similar problem myself. I do believe I need someone… discreet to handle it for me."

Bellworth took another puff, held the cigar away, peered at the lit end, and nodded through the gray cloud. "You have your own people to attend to such things, surely?"

"I'm afraid one of my own people is the problem. Having one of his underlings take care of him wouldn't do at all, would it?"

"Heavens, no, bad for morale and all that, I understand completely. Well, then, shall I put in a call to my fellow, have him ring you up?"

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble, Harry."

"Not at all, not at all, consider it done. Now, what do you make of Lord Cleese's proposal about bringing back the poorhouses? I thought it was rather a clever idea myself."

Goswell smiled. Here was a subject on which they could certainly agree. Putting the poor to work instead of carrying them on the dole. Bloody Socialists would be the death of the country, if somebody didn't stop them, and such suggestions were, for Goswell's money, right on the mark. It would never happen, of course. The bloody Socialists would have bloody conniptions if anybody tried, but still and all, it would shake people if Parliament actually considered such a thing. Indeed it would.

It would seem he was going to have to take direct control of his own personal war on the world's foolishness, given as how his primary tools had somehow gotten bent. He sighed. One should expect such things in this day and age, but they still came as rather a surprise. You simply could not get dependable help these days, not of the caliber that once was. Such a pity.

Toni didn't expect to see Alex waiting for her when she got through the throng at the Chunnel train station, but there he was. She was tired after the ride from Paris, and the air in the tiny tunnel under the English Channel had seemed particularly stuffy, though that was probably just psychological. All that unseen water weighed heavily upon you. Good thing she wasn't claustrophobic. She was beat, but her spirits lifted immediately when she saw him.

"Alex! What are you doing here?"

They hugged, he took her bag, and said, "I missed you. Welcome back, sweetie. How'd it go?"

"Okay. They really are well-mannered, most of the French. It's only the few who give them such a bad reputation. Well, okay, more than a few, but it wasn't so bad. As long as you don't pretend to understand the language and try to speak it, even the waiters aren't too nasty."

"You always liked anybody who liked Jerry Lewis," he said.

"He was a comic genius. Good slapstick isn't easy, you know."

He laughed. It was an old joke between them. But Jerry Lewis was funny; he had created that monkey character, built from it, and some of his later dramatic roles were as good as any actor working. He was underrated.

"Anything happening here?"

"No… not really. Well, except that I got a call from John Howard. He's landed at an Air Force base north of here."

"The colonel? Why?"

"Plekhanov's hired gun, Ruzhyo. They traced him to England."

"Great. One more brick on the load."

He didn't say anything to that.

"You look tired," she said.

"I didn't sleep well."

"I bet I can help you fall asleep tonight."

"I bet so."

She squeezed his arm. He smiled at her. They'd been passing each other in the dark lately. It was time to get back on the same track. She said, "You talked to Jay? He called me. He's doing better."

"Yeah. I'm glad to hear that."

"And he says he is making progress toward finding our hacker."

"About time we had some good news on that front."

He seemed a little bit stiff, but just look at him, he was obviously tired. A nice hot shower and crawling under the covers together would do wonders for both of them. She had missed lovemaking with him. And, truth be known, she was getting horny from all the working out with Carl. Best drain that tension and be done with it.

Howard sat in the backseat of the Ford behind Julio and the driver loaned to them by the RAF. They were on the M11, heading south, toward London. He passed signs for Bishop's Stortford and Sawbridgeworth, and except for the colors and shapes of the signs, it could have been an American freeway in the countryside of New York or Northern California. The greenery was similar, the look of civilization not all that different.

Well, except for being on the wrong side of the road.

Julio sat where an American would be at the steering wheel back home, and he seemed a bit more relaxed on the motorway than he had been on the surface streets. Leaving the base, every time they'd rounded a corner and seen cars coming from the opposite direction, Howard had seen Julio tense, his foot going for an imaginary brake. He understood the feeling, since he had put his own braking foot against the back of the seat a few times.

Why on earth had the British chosen to drive on the wrong side of the road?

It was maybe a little easier because the driver's controls were on the right, but it would take some getting used to before Howard wanted to do his own driving here.

They were still thirty miles from downtown London, the driver told them, but they were also zipping along at about seventy-five, and Howard knew that was miles per hour and not kilometers. They were going to MI-6 to meet Commander Michaels and fill him in on the hunt for the Rine — which was what Ruzhyo meant in Russian. The guy had a warped sense of humor to go along with everything else.

"You doing okay up there, Sergeant?"

"Just fine, sir. Enjoying the lovely countryside."

The driver, a British airman, grinned. "I went to visit my uncle in New York City once," he said. "I thought I'd go mad first time I got out on the road in his car. Why'd you Yanks decide to drive on the wrong side of the road that way?"

"You are in error, Limey," Fernandez said. "What's the brand name on this beast? F-O-R-D, isn't it? We invented cars, so we got to pick which side of the road first."

"Begging your pardon, Sergeant, but where did you get that notion? Henry Ford was a Johnny-come-lately, now wasn't he? Making a lot of them is not the same as making them first, is it?"

"You're not gonna sit there and try to tell me with a straight face that the English invented the automobile, are you?"

"It's the king's truth, Sergeant."

"Bullshit it is."

The driver grinned wider. "Well, everybody knows it was the Frogs what made the first steam carts, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, with his tricycle steamer in 1769. By the 1830s everybody and the king's nephew had steamers up and running, in England as well as half of Europe. Even had those in the States by the end of your Civil War. But we're not talking about scaled-down steam trains that ran on dirt roads now, are we? We're talking about automobiles.

"The first real car with an internal combustion engine? Well, that was built and driven up Shooter's Hill in London by Sam Brown round 1823 or 1826, if you believe old Sam himself, who was admittedly a bit hazy on dates. Ran on carbureted hydrogen, it did. I make that a bit sooner than John Lambert, who put the first one together in the U.S. in 1891. He beat the Duryea brothers by almost two years, though they usually get credit for the first 'un, but that's only a drop in the bucket compared to sixty years, innit?"

"Great," Fernandez said. "Just my luck to sit next to the fucking Royal Historian slumming as an airman driver."

The driver laughed. "Man ought to know his tools, right? I drive 'em, I might as well learn a little something about 'em, eh?"

Fernandez laughed. "Score one for the home team. Which side of the road do they drive on in France?"

"Who cares?" the airman said. "They're the bloody French, aren't they?"

Even Howard laughed at that one.

Ruzhyo met Peel at a corner in front of a giant Coke sign that flashed thousands of lights overhead. They were to discuss his assignment, but when he asked about it, Peel shook his head. "Let's leave off on that for a moment," he said. "I've got something else I need you to do."

Ruzhyo raised one eyebrow. "Yes?"

Tourists bustled along the sidewalks. A group of schoolchildren in uniforms, holding hands in pairs, snaked past like a blue and white caterpillar.

Peel looked nervous. He checked his surroundings constantly, if unobtrusively, as if he was being watched. "I need somebody to cover my back," Peel said. "I think maybe I stepped on somebody's toes."

Ruzhyo nodded. "All right. Do we know whose?"

"Not for certain. I have an idea, but I'll have to check further."

"Why me?"

What he was really asking was more involved than that: Why trust me? We don't know each other that well. Surely you have your own men?

Peel answered the unasked part of the question: "Because you don't have any reason to want me dead."

Ruzhyo kept his face deadpan. "Not that you know of."

Peel smiled, short and tight. "Have you gotten a gun?"

"Not yet," he lied. He kept his voice bland.

Peel produced a small, zippered, dark blue nylon pouch from his inside jacket pocket and handed it over. "Beretta, model 21A, 22 caliber, Italian, but this model was American-made. Six in the magazine, one in the chamber, double-action first round if you wish, tip-up barrel."

"I am familiar with the weapon."

Peel nodded. "There are two extra magazines, already loaded as well. CCI Minimags, solids. I could have gotten you a bigger gun, but I understand that Spetsnaz ops have a fondness for the smaller calibers."

"It will do. And it shoots how?"

Peel nodded, as if he expected the question, but nonetheless pleased to hear it. "I didn't have time to have the armorer smooth it out, so the double-action pull is a bit stiff, probably twelve or fourteen pounds. Single-action is fairly tight, five pounds or so, but with a little creep. Shoots dead on at seven yards, two inches high and slightly right at twenty-five yards."

"I understand."

"I would appreciate it if you would keep it handy, then. And if you should happen to see somebody sneak up behind me with a gun or a knife, shoot them for me, would you?"

Ruzhyo gave him a choppy, military nod, slipped the pouch into his pocket, and unzipped it. He removed the pistol, and thumbed the safety off. Given the stubby barrel, the Beretta would not be as accurate as the umbrella gun, but it was added firepower. And the little weapon would also be the devil that Peel knew about.

The Russian faded into the background, just another foreign tourist with an umbrella, to keep potential trouble off of Peel's arse. Peel felt a little better, a little safer. Maybe it was all in his mind, a figment of his imagination, being stalked, but he hadn't kept his body and soul together by ignoring his inner alarms. Now and again he was wrong, and nothing amiss ever turned up, but why take the chance?

Once, he had been on a bivouac with a drop squad doing training in the middle of some woods in NSW, Australia. They had backpacked in more than fifteen miles off the beaten track, into the foothills. They were only a couple thousand feet up, in a dry area where the dust was red and thick on everything, raising in clouds every time they took a step outside the tents. They were camped in a small clearing amid trees and scrub so thick it was like there were solid walls all around them.

Just before dark, as the men were settling down to cook the evening meal, Peel got spooked. A sudden, overwhelming fear rose in him, so fast and so powerful that he wanted to run, to get away from the area as fast as he could move.

It was totally irrational. There was nothing threatening around, no other people for miles, as far as they knew. He tried to reason with himself. God, he was a trained officer, a battle-tested lieutenant, young, brave, armed to the teeth, with six veteran men who could chew nails and pee needles, likewise armed, and there wasn't anything in the bloody woods that could seriously bother them. But that didn't matter. His sense of imminent doom was undeniable. Without explaining, and making it seem as if it was some part of their training, he ordered his men to pack up and be ready to move out in five minutes. It took them almost seven, but as soon as they were ready, they force-marched six miles before Peel's sense of danger faded. They reestablished camp, posted a guard, and turned in.

Early in the morning hours before dawn, the sentry woke Peel and pointed out the orange glow in the sky. A forest fire.

Later, when he checked, Peel found that the fire had begun just below their original campsite. It had swept up the hills so fast that fleeing deer had been caught in the deadly flames, and had he and his men stayed above, where the fire raged, none of them would have survived.

His men had been impressed.

How had he known? Some faint hint of smoke in the air nobody had caught? Some frightened animals in the woods whose fear had been powerful enough so that he could somehow sense it? He had pondered it but never came up with an answer that satisfied him. More important than how was that he had done it. Some intuition had told him Death was near, and he had had enough sense to go with it.

Similar things had happened in various firefights and patrols since, though nothing quite as dramatic as the Australian event, and when he had felt the cold touch of it on his shoulder, he had harkened to it. More times than not, such actions had saved his life.

There was no enemy in sight here, but he felt the fear. The only cause he could figure was the scientist. Nobody else knew what he was doing, and the man certainly had something to hide. It didn't make sense, not with Bascomb-Coombs giving him a bloody million and making him a kind of partner in the scheme, but who else could it be? And in truth, he hadn't seen the money stacked up neatly on a table somewhere, had he? It was all electronically vouched for by the Indonesian bank, and normally that would have been enough, but Bascomb-Coombs was owner and operator of the world's nastiest computer, wasn't he? Surely he could fool somebody not computer-savvy enough to know the difference, if that was his wish.

Why would he wish to do that?

Peel did not have a clue, but something was lurking out there, and he did not wish to become its victim. Best he take steps to find out, and best to be quick about it, too. And if it was Bascomb-Coombs, well, all his genius wouldn't stand up to a knife between the ribs or a bullet to the back of the skull. When push came to shove, the sword was a much better weapon than the pen, no question.

Peel walked toward the train station, feeling a bit better now that he was taking action.

Chapter 29

Sojan Rinpoche was coming to see Jay. He was coming here, to his apartment, in the flesh, and Jay was more than a little nervous.

The advantage of VR was that you could craft your image into anything you wanted. True, Jay tended to look like himself in a lot of scenarios because it was more trouble than it was worth to create a persona to impress somebody. Well, okay, so he touched himself up at the edges, maybe, he looked a little taller, more muscular, had lines that were a teeny bit sharper, but not so much you couldn't recognize him in RW if you met him. After you had been a player for years, you more or less disregarded what you saw when it came to other players in VR, anyhow. You'd meet them off-line in some RW conference or whatever, and you couldn't quite reconcile the real person with the net persona. A lot of times, they would build an image that looked totally different but not bother to change their voice, and hearing them speak from a completely unrecognizable body was weird. Or they'd change the voice but not the face, and that was strange, too.

Truth was a very subjective thing in virtual reality. The term itself was almost an oxymoron.

Saji had told Jay on the net that he was going to be in D.C. for a couple of weeks and asked Jay if he wanted to meet in real time. Jay had agreed, though he had a few reservations. Saji had saved his butt, no doubt about that, and he owed him BTDS — big-time-damn-sure — but there was that little gnawing worry that the real Saji might not jibe with the virtual version. Buddhists had dealt with illusion a long time before computers had been invented, and maybe he'd look like Saji and maybe he wouldn't. Sometimes, you hated to meet somebody for whom you had great respect, for fear the reality wouldn't live up to your imagination. Once, when he'd been a kid, Jay had happened across the host of a television show he'd loved. On the air, the guy had been smiling, avuncular, the kind of man kids wanted for a father. He'd been Jay's hero. The show host had spotted Jay, and the first words from his sweet lips had been, "Jesus, who let that little dickhead in here?"

So much for childhood heroes.

Jay had killed the tiger, but compared to what he still had to do, that was the easy part. Now he was hunting tyrannosaur, he was stalking a dragon, and he was gonna need a bigger gun. And more nerve. Saji was going to make him spill his guts about it, about how he felt, and that wasn't gonna be fun, either. In some ways, that was scarier than the thunder lizard. Who was it said the unexamined life wasn't worth living? Plato? Aristotle? Yeah, maybe so, but if you spent too much time digging into your own psyche, it got spooky. Maybe the over-examined life wasn't worth living, either.

In Betty Bacall's throaty, sexy tone, the house computer said, "Jay, you have a visitor."

Saji was here.

He was ready for anything. Jay took a deep breath and went to the door. Opened it.

A petite, short-haired brunette woman in blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and cowboy boots stood there. She looked to be about twenty-five, maybe five feet tall even in the boots, and had big dimples around a beautiful smile. She could have been Tibetan, he supposed, but there didn't seem to be any Oriental cast to her features.

"Hello, Jay," she said.

Well… shit. He realized he wasn't ready for anything after all.

"Saji," he said. It was not a question. Son of a bitch. Not only was Saji a woman, she was young and beautiful. This was not fair!

Son of a bitch.

"Telephone call for you, sir," Applewhite said. He came into the room carrying the instrument. "A gentleman by the name of… Pound-Sand, milord. He says you were expecting his call."

Goswell paused and looked through the tubes of the shotgun he had been cleaning. Pound-Sand? He didn't know anybody named that, did he? Did anyone? Someone was pulling Applewhite's leg, surely? He blew hard through one of the barrels, causing a hollow, hooting sound, and lint from the cotton cleaning patch to float out into the room and drift downward in the rays of the afternoon sun.

"He says he was told to call by an old gentleman fond of Cuban cigars."

Ah. That's who it was. He reached for the phone and waved Applewhite out.

"Hello?"

"Lord Goswell?"

"Yes, it is I."

"A moment, please, sir." The voice seemed cultured enough, some education and decent background in it. There came an electronic tone from the other end of the connection. "Excuse the delay," the man said. "One cannot be too careful, can one?"

"You just did a voice analysis?"

"Yes, my lord. And the line is secure, our conversation is quite scrambled. I trust no one is listening in on an extension on your end?"

Goswell nodded to himself. Good show. He said, "No, we're alone, Mr. — ah, Pound-Sand."

The man chuckled. "I hope you'll forgive me the little joke, my lord. Sir Harold has indicated that you have something of a delicate problem?"

"I'm afraid so, yes."

"Would you like this problem resolved temporarily or permanently?"

"Permanently, I'm unhappy to say."

"I shall attend to it immediately."

"You'll need particulars."

"Just the name will be sufficient, my lord. I can determine the rest."

Goswell grinned. Capital!

He gave the killer Peel's name.

"Thank you, my lord, I'll take care of it. Good-bye, then."

Goswell hung up the phone. No discussion of money or tawdry details. How wonderful. He felt better. At least there were still a few good men out there.

Alex Michaels walked along the bank of the Thames near the Jubilee Gardens, watching tourist boats cruise by and wishing he could turn back time. His life had become a fucking soap opera. His investigation was stalled. His ex-wife wanted sole custody of their daughter. He was having a relationship with his second-in-command. Worse, he had damned near slept with someone else, which would have been only the third woman he had been with in a dozen years. How could he tell Toni that? What could he say? Oh, yes, while you were out of town? I came that close to rolling around and breaking furniture all night with the gorgeous British secret agent Angela Cooper. Sorry about that.

Yeah. Now, he had a monkey riding his back, clawed fingers dug into his neck and shoulders, legs wrapped around his torso like a vise, and it was so heavy he could barely stand. He had never felt so guilty in his life. He had never done anything like this before, ever. How could he have been so stupid? How the hell was he going to make this right?

Was it even possible to make it right?

He couldn't stand the idea that he might lose Toni. But if he told her — no, when he told her — that could happen. She could slap his face and stalk out. She could also break his bones and stalk out, though that didn't scare him as much as the hurt he'd see in her face.

What the hell had he been thinking about?

Sure, he could try to blame it all on Angela, she had worked pretty hard to get him to her place, had set it up with the massage and all, but he wasn't fooling himself with that rationalization. She hadn't held a gun to his head. It took two to tango. He could have politely declined the offer and gone home.

You can't spike paper without a paper spike.

Okay, fine, so you didn't actually spike anything, but like horseshoes and hand grenades, close counts here. Ah, Jesus.

Some Japanese tourists on a bargelike boat with a brightly colored canopy over it smiled and waved at him. Probably thought he was a local; not much difference between an Englishman and an American to look at, was there?

The tourists didn't have a clue that the idea of throwing himself into the Thames and diving to the bottom and staying there held a certain morbid appeal just at the moment.

He waved back. "Eat shit and die," he said, smiling falsely.

How could men do such things, cheat on their wives or significant others as he had done? Almost done. Once, he'd had drinks with a lawyer he'd met on the job, a tall, handsome, rich guy who was married to a beautiful woman. They had three children, a great home in Virginia, money, dogs, cats, every measure of happiness you could want. They started talking. The lawyer had a couple of drinks, then confided in Michaels. Once, not long ago, the lawyer said, he'd been to a fund-raising breakfast in D.C. Aside from his wife, there were four very attractive women at the table, some married, some not, ranging in age from twenty-two to forty. He had, the lawyer said, slept with all of them during the past year and looked forward to doing it again with each of them. None of them knew about the others. It was a peak moment for him, he'd said.

Michaels had nearly choked on his drink. The man must be mad. The idea of sitting at table with five women, all of whom he had been to bed with, filled him with terror. In such a situation, he would have dropped dead of fright, no doubt about it. The tension would have been unbearable. He could see his head just… exploding, like a cherry bomb on New Year's Eve.

His experience was small, but he believed that women could tell these things somehow. A wrong look or word from Angela, and Toni would know. That was the last thing he wanted to happen, that she find out from somebody other than him.

The second to last thing he wanted to happen was that she find out from him.

Oh, man! What was he going to do now? No matter how he looked at it, this was a no-win situation.

Should have thought about that when you shucked your clothes and rolled over on that massage table, pal. Should have put your brain in gear before you put your hydraulics in motion…

Ruzhyo followed Peel, keeping his rented car one or two vehicles back in the traffic. He did not consider himself an expert in surveillance — he had known men who could follow a damned soul through Hell's Main Gate without the Devil knowing it — but it was much easier when the subject knew you were tailing him and wanted you to be there. It was true he had shadowed people before, usually just before he killed them. And it was true he knew the basics of moving surveillance, how to use cover, how to blend into the background, when to back off and let somebody go to keep from burning them. Such skills were part of his trade, and he was adept, if not a master.

Ruzhyo glanced at a street sign as they drove past. Old Kent Road. And there, off to one side, was something called the South East Gas Works. He made a mental note of these.

One of the tricks that beginning operatives learning how to tail somebody often missed was to pay attention to where you were. There was a tendency to concentrate on your subject to the exclusion of all else. You might not see his friend, laying and watching for just such as you. Or you could stay with a subject through various twists and turns, sometimes even when he got cute and tried to see if he was being followed, but if you were not paying proper attention when the subject stopped, you looked up and did not have any idea as to where you were. In a familiar city, this was not a problem, perhaps, but in a strange town, it could cause difficulty. If you did not have a good local map or a GPS, finding your way back to your base might be a chore. And there were worse things. There were areas in every city where you simply could not park a vehicle and sit in it for several hours waiting for a subject to return to his vehicle and depart. A residential street in a well-to-do neighborhood was a bad place to stay. Rich people had things they wanted protected, and they also felt that the law and its officers should offer them priority. It might be a public street, and you might have the right to park there legally, but if the local captain of industry glanced out his mansion window and saw you sitting in your automobile in front of his property, he would call the police and they would come and check you out. If the private security patrol didn't get to you first.

Parking and sitting for long periods in front of a bank was also an unwise action.

If you drove into a strange area and found yourself near a primary school, close enough to view the children playing, you could safely bet everything you owned against a plugged ruble that police would be arriving shortly to see if you were some kind of molester waiting for a chance to expose yourself — or do worse — to the children. If you did not have an excellent reason for being there — and there were no reasons excellent enough to convince the police that a man should be perched and watching children, except possibly that you were one of them laying in wait for someone like they thought you were — you would be directed to move along.

In such a situation, it would be to your advantage to have some knowledge of where else you might go to watch for your man leaving.

Peel turned into a parking lot in front of a small, gray, two-story building.

Ruzhyo drove past the lot and spotted a parking place on the street only a few meters ahead, and under the overhang of a smallish oaklike tree. He grinned. The first rule of automobile surveillance, as taught to him by Serge, the old Russian Spetsnaz operative who had trained him in the basics, was: Always park in the shade. The warmer the day, the more important this becomes.

Ruzhyo pulled the car into the slot, killed the engine, and looked to make certain nobody followed Peel into the parking lot. Nobody did.

Peel alighted from his car and headed for the building, giving no sign that he saw Ruzhyo. Peel had already told him the building to which he was going was secure, there was no need to follow him inside.

Ruzhyo shifted in the seat and looked for signs of anybody who might either be there already or arriving to position himself so as to watch Peel's departure. Should he see anything he considered threatening, he would call Peel, using his mobile telephone, and they would decide how to proceed from there.

Seated in the car with nothing to do but watch, Ruzhyo thought again about going home. The travel problems had mostly resolved, and he could easily figure out a way onto the European mainland. There had been another case in the newspaper just yesterday of some fool who had managed to bypass the fences and security cameras and guards to get into the Chunnel on foot. It had taken him all day to walk from England to France, and it was a wonder the slipstream of the trains, barreling along at 160 kilometers per hour, hadn't sucked him off the narrow ledge to his death. Several others had died thus in the last few years.

Such a thing just proved that if a man wanted to get somewhere bad enough, he could find a way.

He owed no allegiance to Peel, and the money he was being paid meant nothing; he had plenty of money. But he would give this a few more days. It was mildly interesting, and Peel had managed to spot and surprise him. That meant something in his business. A few more days wouldn't hurt.

Chapter 30

Tyrone stood more or less hidden inside the sporting goods store, looking out at the food court. He'd cut classes to come to the mall. Bella was there, seated at a table in front of the Tor-tee-ah Mah-ree-aa, surrounded by half a dozen girlfriends and a couple of boys. The males weren't anybody Tyrone recognized as belonging to Bella, just some small moons orbiting her bright star. Bella laughed and they all laughed. When she talked, they listened. She was something.

He had mixed feelings about her. On the one hand, he hated her guts for how she had dropped him. No warning, blam! Right between the eyes, and hasta la vista Ty-rone-ee! She wasn't used to having guys tell her they didn't like how she was behaving, and he had sure done that. Just like that, it was end game, and don't bother to put another coin in, because you don't get a replay.

On the other hand, just look at her. She was so beautiful, the center of every room she entered, guys would line up just to kiss the ground she walked on. And, once upon a time, she had bestowed her favors on him. Kissed him, touched him, let him touch her, and the thought of being able to do that again, to walk around knowing he had her attention, well, that was something magic, no question, no Q. He'd once had his hand on that perfect breast, tangled tongues inside that perfect mouth. It was exciting to think about it, and lucky he was between two racks of ski clothes so nobody could see just how exciting it was.

She had practically invited him to the mall. He could walk out of this store, kinda amble over to where she sat, and see what was what. Would she smile and welcome him into the fold, have him sit next to her? Because, in the end, she respected him for telling her how it was? Or was it some kind of sicko-sticko where she'd dry ice him in front of her friends, embarrass the hell out of him, make him look like a total fool? He didn't think she'd do that. She could have done it a lot of times before now and why wait so long? But he wasn't sure.

Once upon a time not too long ago, he'd have run as fast as he could move and never worry about it for a nanosec. He had loved her. He thought she loved him, too. But that was then. Life changes a lot in a few months, no feek.

When he thought about Bella, he felt like he was a washcloth, twisted, wrung out, tossed onto the edge of the tub still in a knot without even being hung out to dry. This could be the time to find out where he stood, to know for sure.

Thing was, did he really want to know? Being dumped once was awful. Being humiliated in public on top of that would be zero cubed. He could hear Jimmy Joe and the rest of the geek patrol now: "Whoa, slip, I hear you got driced by The Belladonna (donna-donna-donna-wah-wah-wah-whaah) right in the middle of the mall! Count Zero, cold cut, got your card maxed. How you feel about that?"

Tyrone shook his head. He didn't want to play that scenario in RW or VR, thank you very fucking much.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But nothing lost, either, right?

But if it got Bella back, got you to her house on the couch, got you another chance at putting your hands on that perfect body, those lips against yours, wouldn't that be worth the risk?

Oh, yeah.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Took another. Worst-case scenario, he'd look like a big fool. Best case?

He had an imaginary flash of Bella, naked, hair spread out on a pillow. It was vivid enough that he forgot to breathe. He was fourteen, and that was an image to die for — never mind that it was also to go to jail for, even if she was older than he was. Bella. Naked…

Jesus Christ!

When he remembered how to breathe again, Tyrone headed for the door. Do or die, slip. Do or die.

John Howard stood outside the MI-6 building, watching his boss walk across the street and head toward him. He waved and saw Michaels see him and wave back.

"Colonel. How are you?"

"Pretty good, sir. All things considered."

"Anything new on the search for the assassin?"

"Yes and no," Howard said. "We know he was on a flight out of Seattle on Wednesday. We know he came here. We have confirmation via a scan of passengers going through customs. Fiorella pulled up arrivals from the U.S. early Thursday morning. We got a photographic match."

He tendered a hardcopy color print of a man strolling through the airport. A grid of fine lines had been superimposed over the photograph.

"You sure this is him?"

"It looks like him. Right place at the right time. Computer says the ears and hands match our reference. Unless he has a twin brother, it's him, all right."

Michaels nodded at the building. "Shall we go inside?"

As they passed the guards and headed along the hallway, Michaels said, "It's been almost a week. He could be anywhere by now."

"Yes, sir, that's true. He could have moved on before the travel computer systems all went south. We've got mainframe time on Baby Huey, and with British cooperation, Lieutenant Winthrop is back home using it to crunch flight and train and auto rental information, even boat rentals from London to anywhere else. Even a fake passport picture will have to look something like him."

"He could get one with a phony beard and a wig," Michaels said.

"We're redballing any male traveling alone who is anywhere close to the right height, weight, and age."

"He could hire an escort and travel with her."

"Yes, sir, and he might find a witch doctor who could turn him into a gorilla, too, sir. We've got to start somewhere."

Michaels smiled at that.

They arrived at the office where Howard had left Toni Fiorella.

Inside, Fiorella and a tall, striking, short-haired blonde stood and looked at an enlarged holoproj image of dozens of faces lined up in rows.

"Got the first run of photos from Jo Winthrop, Colonel," Toni said. "All with either ears that match our size specs or are covered by hair so we can't see them clearly. Hi, Alex. Have a good walk?"

"Yeah, thanks," Michaels said. He looked uncomfortable. Pale.

"Oh, excuse my manners," Toni said. "Colonel John Howard? This is Angela Cooper. She is our liaison to MI-6. Colonel Howard is the head of the Net Force Strike Teams."

The blonde extended her hand and smiled at Howard. "How do you do, Colonel. Pleased to meet you."

He shook her hand, returning the smile. He caught a glimpse of Michaels peripherally. The man had a sickly grin pasted in place, but he looked to Howard as if he was about to throw up.

Cooper released Howard's hand, and he caught her flick a quick gaze at Michaels. He followed it, and saw Michaels glance away, refusing to meet her look. It was nothing, no more than half a second's worth of what might be his imagination. But—

Oh, my.

Howard usually went to church on Sundays with his wife and son, but he didn't consider himself any kind of prophet, able to see more than everybody else could see. Then again, he'd been around the block a time or two, and he liked to think he was not too bad at reading people.

Something was there. Something in the glance that the good-looking dishwater blonde had thrown at Michaels, the way he had refused to engage her, something was going on here.

Howard, like most men away from home a lot, had been tempted by the possibility of extramarital liaisons from time to time. There had been more than a few women interested in getting to know him horizontally, and a couple of them had been attractive enough so the thought had started to cross his mind. Who would know? Who would be hurt by it? How did the old song go? If you couldn't be with the one you loved, couldn't you love the one you were with?

No harm, no foul, right?

Fortunately, in all the years he'd been married, all such thoughts had died before they had gotten more than a few steps from wonder toward action. He didn't think of himself as particularly righteous — he'd sowed a fair number of wild oats as a young soldier before he got married — but he'd put all that aside when he'd said "I do." Maybe he was luckier than most; he hadn't slipped since. But he had known a lot of men who had chosen to go and sin some more. He'd seen plenty of these men standing next to women they pretended not to know as well as they did know them.

He couldn't have sworn to it on a Bible in a court of law, but that little exchange between Michaels and Cooper told Howard something he'd just as soon not know, too: These two had something going on together. And more than that, from how she acted, Toni Fiorella didn't know it.

Oh, boy. All of a sudden, Howard was very glad he was not Alex Michaels. Very glad.

Ruzhyo saw the shooter the second he opened his car door.

It was good luck, really; he'd just happened to be right next to the car and looking that way as he walked along twelve or thirteen meters behind Peel. If he hadn't looked at just that instant, it might have been too late, but he had seen the glint of sunlight on stainless steel as the man pulled his jacket shut to hide the handgun tucked into his waistband on his right side. Half a second later, he'd have missed that and not known for sure the shooter was anything other than just another pedestrian hurrying to a late appointment or to pick up something before the shops closed.

The shooter came out only a meter or so behind Ruzhyo, who just kept walking, drifting to his right slightly, as if window-shopping at a hat store. The shooter, a tallish man with thinning, sandy hair, dressed in a windbreaker over a tan polo shirt, khaki slacks, and running shoes, walked past, intent on his target.

Ruzhyo glanced around. He didn't see a backup man. He moved away from the window and onto the shooter's tail, hurrying his pace. He reached down to where his mobile phone was clipped to his belt and tapped the "send" button.

The number was preprogrammed, one of two Peel had given him, and the mobile phone on Peel's belt would now be vibrating with the call. Nobody else had the number, Peel had told him, and if it vibrated, that meant Ruzhyo had spotted a deadly threat too close to use the other number to call and talk about it.

Peel made an immediate right turn and into the door of the closest shop. A bookstore.

The shooter angled that way to follow.

Ruzhyo speeded up so that he reached the bookstore's door half a meter behind the shooter. It would be easy enough to blast the shooter and put him down and out, but they wanted to keep him alive long enough to find out who had sent him. That might be a little trickier on the street, but inside a shop, with fewer witnesses, it should be easier.

Peel knew what was needed, and he quickly led his would-be assassin down an empty aisle bounded by tall shelves of musty books. Before the shooter could get to his weapon, Ruzhyo got to him. He shoved the little Beretta into the shooter's spine and said, "Move and you die."

The shooter was a pro. He froze.

"Clear," Ruzhyo said.

Peel turned around, his hand under his sport coat at the right hip. He smiled. "Henry? I thought you retired? "

The sandy-haired man said, "I should have, so it seems."

"Bit late now," Peel said. "Let's go somewhere and have a little chat, shall we?"

"That won't do, Terry, you know that."

"You can't win, Henry. My man there is ex-Spetsnaz. He can make you a paraplegic and we still get to have our talk. Why don't we keep it civilized? We might even be able to work something out so that nobody has to feed the worms."

"Really, Terry, I hoped you'd think better of me than that—

With that, Henry leaped to the side, a move unexpected enough so that Ruzhyo's shot missed his spine and punched a small hole over the man's left kidney. The blast was loud, channeled by the books and shelves so that it lapped back over the three men. They had a few seconds left to finish this at most.

"Alive!" Peel shouted, pulling his own gun.

Ruzhyo tracked Henry's right hand, knowing that was the one closest to his hidden pistol. He would shoot for the hand, and if he missed, an abdominal shot with a.22 wouldn't be immediately fatal.

Maybe Henry realized he couldn't get his own pistol out fast enough to outshoot them. He didn't even try. Instead, he shoved his left wrist to his mouth and bit down on his watch band. Ruzhyo knew what the move meant, and apparently, so did Peel, who said, "Bugger all!"

Ruzhyo put his pistol back into his pocket, turned, and headed for the exit at a fast walk. Peel was right behind him. People, even bookworms, would come to see what the noise was about.

Whatever poison pill Henry had just bitten into was undoubtedly fast-acting, and there was no way to torture information from a man who would rather kill himself than reveal it. A pro, all right. Henry would probably be dead before any medical help could reach him, and beyond help in any event. Ruzhyo respected a man who died well. If you knew your time was up, it was better go out the way you elected to leave. You lost the war, but if you could cheat your enemy of anything at that point, you could carry some small satisfaction with you to your grave.

Outside, on the sidewalk again and moving moderately fast but not running, Peel gained past Ruzhyo and headed for his car. He said, "I rather liked old Henry. A shame."

As he followed him, Ruzhyo considered how he was going to rid himself of the Beretta. He would have to lose it somewhere as soon as possible. A man was dead in a bookstore, and it would be poison that caused his demise, but even a hollowpoint sometimes retained enough of itself to be matched ballistically to the gun that had fired it. And a gun that could be connected to a dead man was a bad talisman to have around.

Chapter 31

Jay brought Saji a glass of water, shook his head, and said, "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

Seated in the overstuffed chair, she smiled. "More than I should, yes."

He went to sit on the beat-up gray leather couch he'd bought at a garage sale. There was a faint smell of patchouli in the air. Her perfume? Residue from incense clinging to her hair? God, she was gorgeous. "I should know better after all my years on the net, but I didn't expect this."

"Does it bother you that much?"

He thought about it for a second. "No. Not really. It's the mind that matters, not the body."

"That's to your credit, Jay. You really believe it. If I had known that when we met, I wouldn't have bothered with the disguise."

"So satisfy my curiosity — why did you?"

She swirled the ice cubes in her glass. "You want the quick answer or the lecture?"

"Oh, go for the lecture. Condensed books are usually boring."

She smiled. "All right. Buddhism is like a lot of traditional religions in that, for a long time, virtually all of the ranking practitioners were men. Oh, there have always been nuns and women laity who walked the path as well as any man, but for a lot of folks even now, there is a gender bias. And in most traditional holy books — the Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, and most Buddhist literature — when women are referred to at all, it is with a paternalistic and condescending tone, even while supposedly singing their praises: Women are the keepers of life, the bearers of children, the weaker, needs-to-be-protected-from-the-harsh-world sex. Blah, blah, blah. Most old-style religions see women more as property than as people. A man has a farm, goats, cattle, and a wife. Women have had the vote in this country for less than a hundred years. You still with me?"

"Flow on, I'm here."

"Okay. So, the philosophies want to keep the girls barefoot and pregnant, tending the home fires while serious business is conducted by the boys. With few exceptions — various kinds of Goddess worship and Wicca and the like — until very recently, women were not really considered major players when it came to doctrine or practice, even in the more "neutral" religions. There still aren't any Catholic priests who are women. In some of the Moslem countries, women still can't show their faces in public. It isn't as bad in Buddhism as some of the other religions, and great strides have been made in the last hundred years, but there is still a kind of unspoken belief among serious students that women aren't quite as good at it as men. Physicality discounted, women don't think the same way as men. Female chess players at the highest levels don't beat the male champions. Most men are better in spatial tests, in pure left-brain thinking, than women. Men — and some women — see this as reason that they should be in charge. Equality has been a long time coming, and in most places it still does not truly exist."

Jay nodded. He knew this. And he could see where it was going, but he said, "Still here."

"In a lot of circles, if they think you're an old man, you get a lot more respect than if they think you're a young woman. Truth is truth, but a lot of people look to see who delivers it before they accept it. You know the old Hollywood joke about the producer and the writer? The writer sends in a script to the producer who is in a hurry for it. Weeks pass, the producer doesn't call back. Finally, the writer calls him. Says, 'Well, did you read the script?' 'Yeah, I read it.' 'So, what did you think?' The producer says, 'I dunno what I think. Nobody else has read it yet.' "

She shook her head. "That's how it works in religion sometimes. If you have a choice between a seventy-year-old man and a twenty-something girl offering nuggets of wisdom, when push comes to shove, you pick the old guy. Old and wise are better than young and stupid."

"That's dumb," Jay said. "If you can walk the walk as good as an old guy, it shouldn't matter. It's what you say, not who says it that counts."

She rewarded him with a big smile. "I love you. Marry me," she said.

He blinked. "Huh?"

She laughed, a deep and melodious sound. "We'll get back to that part of the Dharma later. How goes the monster hunt?"

He sighed. "About to get really scary."

"That's why I'm here. I think I should go with you."

Stephens drove the Bentley along at a proper pace toward the computerworks. Goswell reclined in back, the scent of fresh mink oil hand rubbed into the leather a familiar and pleasing smell. Traffic was, as usual, awful, but Stephens was quite capable of dealing with anything London could throw at him. Goswell leaned back and enjoyed the ride.

A short while later, Stephens said, "Milord. There is a telephone call for you. Sir Harold."

"Yes, I'll take it."

Stephens passed over a mobile phone. "Hallo, Harry."

"Hallo, Gossie. Out and about, are we?"

"In the car, yes. Off for a bit of an inspection tour of one of the facilities. Can't let the help get too complacent, can we?"

"Certainly not. Er… I say, Gossie… that is, hmm."

"Something bothering you, Harry?"

"Well, yes. You had a conversation with a man by the name of, er… Pound-Sand recently? Regarding a matter of some delicacy of which we spoke at the club?"

"I do recall that, yes."

"Er, well, it seems that Mr. Pound-Sand has… passed away."

"Oh, dear."

"Yes. Quite unexpectedly."

"A sudden illness?"

"Very sudden, I'm afraid. I am given to understand that it happened even as he was attending to that very matter of delicacy. That, er, it was a more or less direct result of that very thing."

"How unfortunate."

"Isn't it just."

"Well, these things happen."

"Yes. Would you like for me to give Mr. Pound-Sand's associates a jingle? See if one of them might be interested in continuing the matter?"

Goswell thought about it for a second. "That's decent of you, Harry, but perhaps we should wait a bit on that."

"As you feel best, Gossie. I'm awfully sorry about this."

"Tut, tut, not your fault at all, Harry. It's obvious I underestimated the difficulty of the problem, myself. Think no more about it."

As Goswell handed the mobile back to Stephens, however, he thought about it. So, Mr. Pound-Sand was now Mr. Pushing-up-the-Daisies. Which meant that Peel was either lucky or good, or perhaps both. On the one hand, that gave Goswell a certain feeling of pride, that his man was adept enough to thwart an assassination by another professional. On the other hand, that also meant Peel would now be on his guard more than ever, and if he had been difficult to remove before, he would be doubly so now.

Hmm. That was certainly food for thought, wasn't it?

"We're very nearly there, milord."

"What? Oh, yes. Quite."

Well. One thing at a time. First he would be certain that Bascomb-Coombs was out of the loop. Then he would figure out a way to deal with the turncoat Peel.

"We got a break, Colonel," Fernandez said.

Howard looked up from the stack of reports he was reading. They were in Michaels's temporary office, and the commander and his second were down the hall talking to one of the MI-6 higher-ups.

"How so?"

"Miz Cooper just came up with this." He passed a hardcopy wax-laser drum photograph over.

Howard looked at the wazer image. "Ruzhyo!"

"Yes, sir." There was a long pause.

"All right, Sergeant, get off the dime. Where and when?"

"Sir." He grinned. "Yesterday the London police were called to an incident at a small bookstore near Piccadilly Circus. They found a body on the floor, shot. The dead man is one Henry Wyndham, a former MI-5 agent who ran a 'security service.' Cooper says that the local authorities suspect Wyndham was a high-priced and very discreet ice man for rich clients, but nobody has ever been able to pin him down. Turns out the bullet didn't kill him, he apparently croaked from a fast-acting poison. This picture was from the store's occult door cam, one of two men who left about the time patrons heard the shot. Here's the other man."

Fernandez offered another picture.

"Anybody we know?"

"Not us. Cooper is working on an ID."

Howard nodded. "So, he's still in London. And he just killed somebody. I wonder why."

"Why he's here? Or why he killed somebody?"

"Both."

"Well, it could be a coincidence, he just happened to be browsing for a nice Agatha Christie novel to while away the hours when somebody got capped the next aisle over."

"Right. Can we backtrack the dead man?"

"Cooper is working on that, too, sir."

Howard nodded again. "Good. Would it do us any good to go and talk to the bookstore employees?"

"Cooper is sending over the police reports, says we can access 'em on the computer in a couple of minutes. But she says nobody saw the two men come in or leave."

"I bet the late Mr. Wyndham saw them come in."

"But not leave. The cops haven't seen anything like this before. The dead guy was armed. The guess is, somebody shoved a gun into his back, he tried to get out of the way. He took a small-caliber round at contact range, probably a.22, and it wouldn't have killed him, the examiner said. But he musta figured he was gonna lose, so he erased himself. The poison was one of the new explosive-pellet neurotoxins. Guy had ninety seconds once he bit the capsule and it spewed."

"Interesting."

"Yeah, ain't it?"

"Well, don't just stand there, go see if Ms. Cooper can find some use for you. He's close, Julio. We're going to get him. I can feel it."

"Yeah."

It was sunny, no wind, a perfect day for working the 'rangs, and Tyrone headed for the soccer field, full of himself. Bella had given her smile back to him, she wanted him around, wanted to see him, had invited him to her house this very evening! Life was better than good; life was great.

When he arrived at the field there, Tyrone saw Nadine. Dee-eff-eff!

But when he got to where Nadine was, she was already packing up.

"Hey, Nadine."

"Hey, Tyrone."

"Where you going?"

"My arm's a little sore. I don't want to overtrain."

"I've got some ibuprofen gel."

"That's okay. I got some at home. See you."

Something was wrong, he could feel it, but he couldn't see what it was. "You okay?"

She looked him straight in the eyes. "I told you my arm was sore. You forget to turn on your implant?" There was a definite hard edge in her voice.

"Whoa, dial it down, I wasn't calling you a preva, I was just asking, that's all."

She went back to loading her backpack. "Why do you care? You don't need to be skulking with people like me. You got Belladonna."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

She jammed the pack shut, lifted it, swung it over her shoulder. "C'mon, Tyrone, you know what it means. You sweat with the jocks, you don't hunch chair with the gamers. You breakfast with the dressers, you don't eat lunch at the scuzz table."

"What are you talking about?"

"You gonna make me say it, aren't you? You skulk beautiful, you don't skulk ugly."

"Who is ugly?"

She gave him a sad smile, a little one. "You telling me I'm in Bella's league, Ty? You'd rather be seen with me than with her?"

He was stunned. He couldn't get his mind on-line. Why was Nadine babbling on about this? Of course Bella was prettier. She was prettier than everybody in the school! What was the point?

He was trying to figure out what Nadine meant, and what he should say, when she shook her head. "Yeah, I hear the dial tone. Copy you later, Ty."

She slipped her other arm into the backpack and walked away.

He watched her go, and while he hadn't done anything wrong he could think of, he felt guilty. Somehow, he had just failed some kind of test, and he didn't even know what it was.

Damn. He wished his father was home. Dad knew about stuff like this. He needed to talk to him.

Chapter 32

Something was wrong, Toni knew. The small cracks in Alex's facade had been plugged up, spackled over, leaving a solid wall in front of his emotions. It wasn't so much what he said or did, but an unseen but somehow detectable shift in his posture. From her years of martial arts training, she had a tendency to view things in terms of physical engagements. What it felt like was, all of a sudden, Alex stood in a defensive stance. When they'd met, his guard had been up, but he had relaxed it when they'd gotten together, begun to allow her to get closer. Now he was hunched over, face covered, backing away.

Sitting in a strange office halfway around the world from her roots, Toni worried about it. What had happened? Sure, he had a lot on his mind, the looming custody battle, the mad hacker, and their relationship had a few bumps in the road, but none of that seemed to be enough to account for this sudden distance between them.

"Ms. Fiorella?"

She looked up. Cooper. "Yes?"

"Your Colonel Howard has some information on his assassin. He'd like your opinion on it. He's in the small conference room."

"Okay. Be right there."

Cooper left, and Toni shook the worry about Alex. She did have a job to do, and while Alex certainly was a complicating factor in it, she couldn't sit here worry-warting about her love life all day. She picked up her flatscreen and headed for the conference room and John Howard.

Howard glanced away from the holoproj as Toni Fiorella entered the room. Julio was there, but Angela Cooper and Alex Michaels were meeting with one of the MI-6 higher-ups and would be a few minutes.

"John. What's up?"

"Toni. The commander will be along in a little while, Ms. Cooper went to collect him, but I wanted to bring you up to speed on the Ruzhyo matter."

"Sure, fire away."

He laid it out for her, using the holoproj images to punctuate the briefing. He did a fast sitrep through the stuff she already knew, then got to the new information.

The holoproj image shifted to the occult cam view from the bookstore. "This man left the store after the incident, at almost the same time as Ruzhyo. According to what Ms. Cooper and her people have found, this is Terrance Arthur Peel, a retired British Army major. Julio, would you lay out the rest?"

"Sir. Ma'am. Peel had a fairly decent career until he was posted to Ireland a couple years back as part of the standing British force at one of the permanent treaty bases. The peace there is fairly fragile, oddball groups still agitating, and from what we're able to gather, Peel was responsible for an incident that might have threatened it. Caught some of the locals doing things they shouldn't have and beat confessions out of them. Apparently, he and his people were… overzealous. There were some serious injuries, even deaths, as a result."

Toni nodded. "Uh-huh."

Fernandez continued: "The British Army is relatively tight-lipped about all this, but Peel was apparently given the choice of falling on his own sword or being drummed out, so he retired, and the incident was swept under the rug. Next time he surfaced, he was providing security for a local bigwig, Lord Geoffrey Goswell. Peel's new boss is not only a nobleman, he is also richer than Midas, a crusty old billionaire who owns half a dozen companies producing everything from computers to catsup."

Toni considered the information for a moment. She had an idea where this was going, but she wanted to hear Howard's take on it. She looked from Fernandez to the colonel. "I see. And this leads you to believe…?"

Howard shrugged. "We really don't have enough information to make a conclusion yet. But it seems awfully coincidental that a former intelligence operative gets shot and poisoned and dead in a bookstore, and a few seconds later, a known killer and a disgraced army major busted for killing prisoners both saunter out the door. If I was a gambling man, I'd be willing to bet these two had something to do with the death. And with each other."

"You think Ruzhyo is working for Peel? Hired to catch or kill the guy in the bookstore?"

"Like I said, it's too soon to make that stretch for sure, but it certainly seems as if we ought to have a chat with this guy Peel. Even if he is totally innocent, at the very least he was there when the trouble went down, and he had to have seen Ruzhyo when he left. If Ruzhyo had been a second slower leaving, Peel would have stepped on his heels."

Toni nodded again. "All right. How do we go about it?"

"Cooper will set it up. We can go along as observers. No guns needed. Apparently, Lord Whatshisname is quite well-connected and beyond reproach."

Fernandez said, "Right. We knock on the door, have a spot of tea, then politely ask the major, 'I say, old bean, did you shoot somebody in a bookstore recently?' and he says, 'Happens I did, old boy. Is there a problem?' They are all very civilized here, pip, pip, eh, whot?"

Toni laughed.

From the sound of her laugh, Howard figured she still hadn't gotten around to discussing Angela Cooper with the commander. Well. It sure as hell wasn't his business, and he wasn't going to—

His virgil peeped, the tone indicating it was a personal call. He frowned. He wasn't really in the field, so he hadn't shut off everything but tactical reach yet; still, it was unusual for his wife to call. "Excuse me a moment," he said. He walked away from the table and pulled the virgil from his belt. Mindful of where he was, he kept his visual transmission off.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Dad."

"Tyrone. Everything okay? Your mother—?"

"Mom's fine, we're three by three and go ahead here, Dad."

Howard relaxed. Nobody had gotten into a car accident or anything. "What's sailing, son?"

"I don't want to bother you if you're busy."

"I'm not that busy. Shoot."

There was a pause. It stretched.

"We are talking transcontinental rates here, Tyrone."

"Sorry. Well, there's this girl at school…"

Howard listened to his son pour out his problem, and he felt himself grinning. Whenever anybody asked him if he'd like to go back and live his life over, he'd always told them no, not a chance. He hadn't made so many mistakes that he would go through puberty again to make up for them. No, sir.

Fiorella and Fernandez ignored him, looking at the computer visuals, and after a little while, Cooper and Michaels arrived.

Finally, his son ran down. "So, whaddya you think, Pop?"

"Well, I could be wrong, but I think your boomerang girl likes you. And she's maybe a little jealous of Bella."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. And she might have a point, too. Why do you like hanging around with Nadine?"

"She can throw, Dad. She's smart, she's funny, and she's got an arm to sell your comic collection for."

"But she's not much of a looker?"

"Not really."

"And Bella?"

"Jeez, Dad, she's gorgeous!"

"And if my memory serves, she's also got a mean streak. You remember talking to me about her when she cut you loose before?"

"Yeah."

"She thumped you pretty good once before. You got any reason to believe she won't do it again if it suits her?"

"Uh… no. But maybe she realized she made a mistake."

"And maybe you're more desirable because somebody else wants you."

"Nadine? No offense, but I can't see that Bella would be the least bit worried about Nadine, Dad. She's fun and all, but she's not somebody you'd cross the street to get a better look at."

"If Nadine is athletic, smart, and funny, some people might find that intimidating, especially if they aren't."

"You mean Bella is jealous of Nadine?"

Howard chuckled. Tyrone spoke in the same tone of voice he might use if he'd just heard his father say he was going to fly home by jumping into the air and flapping his arms real fast.

"What else changed, son, since she dropped you?"

"Nothing." Another silence. Then, "Man."

"It's nice to be wanted," Howard said. "But you have to ask yourself who wants you, and why. You can't blame anybody for the face and form God gives them, but they can't take any credit for those looks, either. Unless maybe they've paid for a lot of expensive plastic surgery."

"What are you saying here, Dad?"

"If Bella wasn't beautiful, if she was plain or even ugly, would you want to spend time with her? Has she got something going for her other than what she looks like? Would you cross the street to talk to her if you couldn't look at her when you did it?"

This dead air was getting real expensive.

"Uh…"

"Think about it. Let it perk for a while and see what comes out."

"Oh, man. I guess I better go. Uh, thanks, Dad."

"Say hello to Mom for me."

"I will. Discom."

"Bye, son."

Howard hooked the virgil back to his belt. He was a soldier, and he was going to be gone a lot, that was the nature of soldiering, but he worried about not being there for his son. A man had to do his job, but a man also had responsibilities to his family. Whatever else was going on, he had a son who needed a father's help. There were values that needed to be passed on, lessons to be taught. He had to remember that. It was important.

Chapter 33

Ferns as tall as pine trees loomed in the sweltering heat, and dragonflies the size of hawks flitted among the lush greenery, hunting mosquitoes that could pass for skinny sparrows. This was primeval, primordial, hot, wet, and dank in ways far beyond a tropical rain forest.

The wide-base Humvee hit a dip and a mound of humus that might grow up to be part of an oil field in twenty or thirty million years. The front wheel on the passenger side bounced into the air and clawed at nothing, but the other three studded tires had enough traction to clear the decaying lump before dropping the vehicle back on all fours.

Jay's teeth clacked together, hard.

Belted into the passenger seat, Saji said, "Damn, Jay! You want me to drive?"

Jay gunned the powerful engine. The Humvee lurched forward. "Like you could do any better."

"I don't see how I could do any worse. Unless maybe I drove off a cliff."

The damp ground leveled out a little, and the tire studs dug in and pushed the wide-track along a little faster. "It's not as easy as it looks."

"Well, the way you do it, easy isn't the word that leaps to mind."

He was trying to come up with a killer comeback when he spotted the smashed ferns. He slowed, crept a few feet closer to the downed plants, then pulled the UV over and put it into neutral. He glanced at Saji. "You can stay here while I go look. Stand by the gun, if you want."

There was a.50-caliber water-cooled belt-fed Browning machine gun mounted on the uncovered rear deck of the Humvee. Clipped to the deck was also a shoulder-operated, laser-guided antitank rocket launcher and half a dozen rockets. Jay had considered bringing rifles and shotguns but decided not to bother. Anything smaller wouldn't do the job. He would have preferred a tank and spent-uranium armor-piercing rounds to shoot from it, but, relatively speaking, the rocket launcher was the biggest thing he could carry in this scenario. Anything more powerful simply wouldn't work. Unfortunately.

"I'd rather not," Saji said. She wore a set of bush khaki shorts and shirt, with Nike waffle-stompers and knee socks rolled down. She was gorgeous in the tropical clothing. He wondered what she looked like without any clothes.

"All right. Slide over and take the wheel, then. Leave the engine running. We might need to take off in a hurry."

He alighted and walked toward the smashed fern boles over fairly springy ground covered with what looked like green moss.

He could hardly have missed the footprint: three toes and a pad, no heel. A little water had seeped into the bottom of the print, which was big enough that, if you completely filled it, you could sit down and take a bath.

Jay swallowed dryly. Jesus, look at that thing. He followed the direction of the toes. Twenty-five feet ahead was another footprint, and there was a definite path through the brush ahead of that, as if somebody had driven a big diesel tractor-trailer through the forest, knocking down anything that got in its way.

Jay stared at the trail of destruction. It wasn't a truck. Nope. It was Rex Regum, the king of kings, Carnosaur Supreme, the ultimate predator. Made your average tyrannosaur look like somebody's pet iguana. The thing could run from one end of a football field to the other end in a dozen steps. Probably was fifty feet tall, not even counting the tail.

Following its trail wasn't gonna be a problem. But like a dog chasing a car, the question was, what would he do if he caught it? That machine gun might not be enough to accomplish the job, and if he got close enough to use the rocket launcher and he missed, he wasn't gonna get a second shot.

He turned and headed back to the car. "Move over," he told Saji.

"Doesn't look as if cutting sign is going to be a problem," she said.

"No, I don't think so." He put the car in gear and started following the monster's trail.

Since his brain had more or less started working again, albeit somewhat slowly, Jay had turned the problem over and over, trying to come up with an explanation — any explanation — as to how such a brute could exist. What could have created it? And with technology as he knew it, there wasn't any answer. But as they drove down the VR path looking for the beast, he thought again about the old Sherlock Holmes dictum about eliminating the impossible and dealing with the unlikely remainder. Nothing he knew about had this kind of power, and he knew a lot about computers. But, given that the thing existed, what could be responsible? What would it take? There weren't too many possibilities, only one that made any sense, and it was theoretical; the hardware didn't exist to make it work.

But what if, by some miracle, it did exist?

"Better go left here," Saji said.

"Really? I thought I'd just drive into that big tree instead."

"Just trying to be helpful."

He shook his head. "Sorry. I'm distracted."

"Something on your mind?"

"A theory."

"Want to bounce it off me?"

Jay looked at the swatch of destruction that ran through the VR jungle. He had to catch up with Godzilla's nasty brother, but the more he knew about him, the better. Anything to clarify his thoughts was good. "Sure," he said.

His lordship had gone off to his club, escorts fore and aft, and Peel was in the little church, on the telephone, currently on hold. Outside, along with Peel's regular crew, the man from Chetsnya waited in a rental car, watching for potential enemies. He should be safe here, Peel figured, but he couldn't bet his life on that.

What was he going to do about the bloody scientist? Should he kill him now?

Naturally, the first thing Peel had tried to do when he started worrying that maybe Bascomb-Coombs wasn't on the level with him was to try to withdraw the million from the Indonesian bank. Had he been able to transfer the money into England, he would have felt a lot better, and that would also have gone a long way toward assuaging his fears. Unfortunately, all kinds of electronic transactions had been disrupted, courtesy of Bascomb-Coombs's infernal computer. All Peel had been able to get from his computer log-in was a "transfer pending" notation, awaiting some final clearance that never happened.

Given the computer problems worldwide, this could have been a legitimate response. It was possible.

But it was also possible that this might be a clever ruse by Bascomb-Coombs, one easily hidden by the chaos he had himself caused. By the time things cleared up, Peel might be dead.

"This is Vice-President Imandihardjo," came a man's voice. "How may I help you?"

Peel turned his attention back to the phone. At last, the bloody Indonesian banker. "Right. I need to check the status of my account."

He could almost hear the man frown. Check an account? For this you needed a vice-president? "Your name and password, please?"

Peel gave it to him.

There was a long pause. "Ah, Mr. Bellsong, yes, I see it."

Peel shook his head. Bellsong. The song of a bell, and thus Bascomb-Coombs's little joke: peal. Same sound, different spelling as Peel.

"You have my account information?"

"Yes, sir, I certainly do." The VP's voice shifted; it now had that obsequious tone that big chunks of money sometimes brought from those who weren't rich. This was good.

"I should like to transfer part of the account into another bank."

"Certainly, certainly. If you will give me the particulars?"

Peel rattled off his English account number and password. He would move it, and once he was sure it had cleared, he would breathe a lot easier.

A moment later, the banker said, "Ah, Mr. Bellsong, there appears to be a problem with our system."

"Really?"

"Yes, sir, I'm sure it's nothing major, but I'm afraid I can't access anything but the balance. The computer won't let me make a transfer."

Peel nodded to himself. Well, well.

"Hmm. It seems that there are several dozen accounts affected. I'm sure it's only a temporary aberration."

"You mean I can't get my money out until it's fixed?"

"Ah, well, I'm afraid so, yes."

"I see." That was all Peel needed to hear. His bowels clenched and went cold. He had a sudden, deep suspicion that what the Indonesian bank would find on closer examination would be electron money: demon dollars that glittered brightly if you looked at them peripherally, but that would turn to smoke and vanish if you tried to lay your hands on them. Bascomb-Coombs was having him on.

"I'm sure this will be cleared up very soon. If you will give me a number where I can reach you, I shall call as soon as we've resolved the problem."

Right.

He gave them his number, but Peel wasn't going to hold his breath waiting for that money to clear. He'd been skewered, and he knew who was holding the shaft, too.

Time to go and have a chat with Mr. Bascomb-Coombs. Yes, indeed.

But almost as he thought this, his phone buzzed. The private line.

"Yes?"

"Hello, Terrance." Well, well. Speak of the devil.

"Hello."

"I'm afraid we have something of problem. It seems his lordship has given orders cutting my access to my — ah — toy. He has shut down all the apparent external lines and posted a guard to keep me from physically entering the building."

"Really? Why is that?"

"I suspect the old boy doesn't trust me."

Good bloody reason for that, Peel thought. Then another thought popped up. " 'Apparent external lines,' you said?"

Bascomb-Coombs had his visual mode off, but Peel could almost see him smile. "Very good, Terrance. Naturally, I have a few digital and microwave transceiver links carefully hidden around the hardware. Even a landline wired into the power supply, if anybody thinks to use jammers. They'd have to take it down to the floor-boards to cut off my connection, and since they don't know it's there, they won't. If they shut it off, they know they might not ever be able to get it up and running again."

"I see. And what does this mean?"

"I believe we shall have to deal with the old boy. Using your area of expertise."

"You think so?"

"I'm afraid I do. I must ring off now, but I'll call you back shortly. Give it some thought, would you?"

The scientist broke the connection. Peel stared at the wall of his office.

God, the man had brass balls. Here he was, trying to have Peel himself iced and pretending as if nothing had happened as he ordered him to kill their mutual employer. Bloody nerve, all right.

He would, Peel realized, be better off with both of them gone. Bascomb-Coombs had to depart this mortal coil, of course; a man who tried to have you assassinated could hardly be allowed to live. And Goswell might be in his dotage, but he wasn't completely senile. Sooner or later, he might tumble to the fact that his security chief had sold him out to the mad scientist, and that would be extremely bad. He doubted the old man would reach for his black powder shotgun to blast him, but certainly he would be able to see to it that Peel never worked in the U.K. again. With a million in the bank, such a thing hadn't worried him, but if the money was no more than a ruse by Bascomb-Coombs, then Peel would be, in a word, screwed.

If Bascomb-Coombs went missing and his lordship fell over with a stroke or heart attack, then Peel would be in the clear, nobody to tell tales. He might not be rich, but he would still be marketable. With a spotless record under his lordship, some other rich fool would find him worthy.

Victory was better than defeat, but there were times when you had to cut your losses and retreat, to survive long enough to try another tack. He had pulled in Ruzhyo because he needed a goat for taking out the old man; but now, given the change of situation, it was better that Goswell die of natural causes, so his security chief wouldn't look bad.

Bascomb-Coombs would simply disappear in such a way that nobody would ever find him.

Peel smiled. Yes, this was all unfortunate but not beyond repair. Time to fix things and get on with it. Kill them all — God will know his own. One of the early Popes had said that, hadn't he? Better them than me.

Chapter 34

During a lull in the increasingly frantic activity at MI- 6, Toni got on the com to call Carl Stewart.

"Hello?"

"Carl?"

"Ah, Toni. How are you?"

"Fine. Look, I'm up to my eyebrows in work, and I can't see any way to get out of it for class tonight. Sorry."

"Not a problem. We'll miss you, but I understand."

"Thanks."

After a short pause, he said, "Well, you do have to eat, though, don't you? Perhaps we can have lunch or dinner later this week?"

Toni's stomach did a small lurch. It wasn't the words but the tone of them that raised the alarm. Was he asking her out on a date? That would have been her most direct question, but Toni wasn't quite ready to ask it. Should she follow that up? Or brush it off? It was moot if she said she was too busy. But, no. She had been doing more waffling lately than she liked. It was time to start facing these things head-on.

"Are we talking about two silat students getting together for a bite, Carl? Or are we talking about something else?"

"Well, I was thinking along the lines of two people who found each other's company interesting and who had a deep interest—pentjak silat—in common."

A date.

Toni's knee-jerk response was to tell him she was involved with somebody and decline politely. The window for her comment opened… and stayed open. He was a vital man, attractive, and he had a skill she much admired. If she and Stewart went to the gelanggang—the fighting floor — for a serious match, he would win; she did not doubt it. She couldn't say that about many people she knew. She was sure that even her own guru, now in her eighties, was no longer up to her level, and she was pretty confident she could keep up with most martial artists, men or women, when it came to one-on-one, however egotistical that might be. But she knew she couldn't defeat Carl. And that was, in its way, a large part of the attraction. She had a momentary vision of what it might be like to lie naked on a bed with this powerful and skilled man, and it was not an unattractive daydream. Not at all unattractive.

She felt a shard of guilt stab her. "I'm pretty much involved with Alex, Carl, and I appreciate it, but I think maybe we ought to keep things strictly professional."

"Ah, too bad. But certainly I understand. I appreciate your candor. Do let me know when you can come back to class."

"I will. Thanks."

After she hung up, Toni had a sick feeling, a cold stirring in her gut. It had, for a moment, been tempting. More so than she wanted to admit. She could have gone down that path, and it bothered her that she had even considered it. She admired Carl, maybe even had a bit of lust for him, but she loved Alex, and there was a world of difference between those two things. For just a moment there, however, she had wondered, had felt indecision, had considered it.

"Can't hang you for thinking" was an old saying that was true because nobody could know what was in your mind, but you couldn't fool yourself for very long. How could it have even crossed her mind? This was bad. Bad.

Ruzhyo adjusted the 9mm Firestar pistol in the clip-on holster on his hip under his windbreaker, canting the butt forward slightly to make it more comfortable. The previous handgun Peel had furnished him, the American-made Italian.22, was at the bottom of the Thames, wiped clean and broken into pieces, the frame and the barrel of which were separated by more than two miles. If anybody happened to dredge the parts up before they rusted out, assembled them, and if they ran ballistic tests and determined that the bullet in the dead man in the bookstore had come from the pistol, it wouldn't matter, since there was nothing to connect Ruzhyo to it. But if you left nothing to chance, then chance would not be so likely to sneak up behind you and fasten its teeth in your back.

He did not much care for the new weapon, but he could use it. It was solid, well-made, a single-action, chrome-plated steel semiautomatic that operated much like the old Colt.45 military models, a reliable, small, if somewhat heavy, piece. The gun carried seven jacketed hollowpoints in the magazine and one more in the chamber with special, scored noses that would expand in a human, causing much damage. The thing had not been designed to punch paper at a range or to plink old cans in the woods but to shoot soft targets and seriously damage or kill them.

Ruzhyo smiled. For the last several years, especially in the U.S., gun makers had been under legal attacks by antigun forces. The more recent tactic had been to sue the manufacturers for not providing adequate safety devices or warnings of danger. He could not believe how foolish this was. Carried to its extreme, there would be similar warnings necessary for automobiles, knives, even matches: Caution! You might be killed if you collide with a big truck while driving this small car! Warning! This knife has a sharp edge. Do not press it against your throat! Danger! Matches can create fire that can burn you!

This gun labeling scheme seemed to him monumentally stupid to anyone with half a working brain. It was one thing to require a lock that children could not easily open, another thing to stamp on the barrel of a gun: Caution! Do not point at someone and pull the trigger! Anybody who did not understand what a gun was and what it did would not be able to read such a warning anyhow. It reminded him of the old advertisement that used to be on the electric buses in Chetsnya when he'd been young: "Are you illiterate? If so, please contact…"

The 9mm would do the job for Ruzhyo, and there was the umbrella to back it up. In addition, he had bought a Benchmade tactical folder, a knife that could be flicked open with a thumb, to lock its four-inch tanto-point blade rigidly into place. Given the local laws, with two guns and a knife, he was probably armed better than almost anybody walking around in this country, including most police officers. As he had in the Nevada desert, Ruzhyo felt the need to have the weapons. Things were about to go bad here; he could feel it.

He considered leaving. Simply catching a boat or train or plane for a short hop out of the country, then heading home, staying on the round to avoid directional tracking. He could do it, and Peel wouldn't miss him in time to stop him, even if he wanted to.

Ruzhyo, however, was tired. And looking over his shoulder made him more tired. He had the Americans back there somewhere, and eventually they might figure out how to track him. He did not need another enemy dogging his trail. No, he would finish this business with Peel first, and when he left, it would be on his own terms. One way or another, he would resolve things. Once he was home, then what came, came, and he would deal with it.

Peel came out of the converted church and nodded in his direction before setting off for his own car. Ruzhyo nodded in return and started his car's engine. They were going back to see the computer scientist where Ruzhyo had spotted the surveillance that had ended with a dead man in a bookstore. Apparently, Major Peel had plans for the man in that building that Mr. Bascomb-Coombs would not in the least enjoy.

Ruzhyo didn't care about the scientist. He would stay with Peel until the right opportunity came up, and then he would take his leave. And it would be soon, he reflected as they pulled out of the estate. Soon.

There had been an all-hours assembly at school, and when it was done, Tyrone drifted down the hall, waving at Jimmy Joe in passing. The hall-monster, Essay, had indeed been expelled, for at least two weeks, and while there were other denizens to be avoided in the corridors, they weren't in the big idiot's league.

As he headed for the bus queue, he saw Bella, book reader in hand, walking and laughing with three girlfriends. She spotted him and smiled. "Ty, hey, over here."

He felt that rush of belly-clenching cold energy that radiated excitement all the way to his groin. He started toward her, holding his steps slow so as not to seem in a hurry. He tried to look sparse, matter-of-fact, and AF — almost frozen, he was so cool. Bella wanted to see him? That was DFF and all, but no huge kluge, hey? Amble. That was the look he wanted; he wanted to amble her way. But he moved maybe a little too fast to pull it off. Kind of a twelve-frames-per-second amble that would look a lot better at twenty-four.

"Hey, Bella."

"We're going to the mall. You want to come along?"

He smiled. And at that second, just when he was about to deliver a liquid-oxy AF "Sure, why not?" he glanced past Bella and saw Nadine walking down the hall.

Nadine saw him, then looked away.

Bella caught his look and flicked her own gaze in that direction. It was quick, her peek, and she pretended not to notice, but Tyrone got it. Nadine had been inspected, stamped failed, and dismissed, all in a half-second glance, and thank you very much.

And all of a sudden, Tyrone Howard, pushing fourteen, found himself at the crossroads of the rest of his life. Looming here were two paths at right angles to each other, and not likely he would be able to switch from one to the other once he made his choice.

You got the com in your hand, Tyrone. Who are you gonna call?

Maybe he could still do both. He said, "Why don't I meet you at the bus? I got something I have to take care of first."

Bella might not be the brightest diode on the board, but she wasn't so dim she couldn't see immediately what he was doing. She let him know she knew, too: "We're going to the mall now, Ty." What was left unsaid, was Now or never, Tyrone. Your call.

Well… shit. It would be great to be able to have his cake and eat it, too, but that wasn't gonna happen, no way, no how, DSS — data scrambled, stupid.

The moment stretched for a couple million years. He felt like he was going to explode. Damn, damn, damn!

You could skulk one or you could skulk the other, but you didn't get both.

Hell with it. He made his decision. "Nadine! Hey, Nadine! Hold up a second!"

Nadine turned, surprised, he could see. He didn't dare look back at Bella, though he wanted to see her face. He'd been given a second chance to get into paradise, and he'd just put it in the trash and emptied that sucker. He wanted to run and hide.

Nadine smiled, and her face didn't seem so plain. When he got there, she said, "Your girlfriend just left without you. Didn't look real happy, either."

He shrugged. "So what?" He felt bad, but he also felt good at the same time. "How's the arm? You want to go throw some?"

"You sure about this?"

"I'm sure."

The smile got bigger. "My arm is a lot better now. Yeah. Let's go throw."

As he walked along next to her, Tyrone felt his own smile begin. Something his dad had told him. When you do the right thing, it almost always feels better than when you don't.

Score another one for the old man.

Chapter 35

"Looks as if it can swim," Saji said.

Jay pulled the Humvee to a halt and shut the engine off. The monster's tracks led to the edge of a sea and disappeared into the water. Small, silky waves with pristine whitecaps rolled machinelike tubes onto the shore. "Looks like," he said.

"What now?"

"We change vehicles. Boat or helicopter. I'm favoring the copter."

"I can understand that. Better to be a few hundred feet above it than sailing along and having it come up under us like Moby-Dick."

Jay nodded. "The disadvantage is that we can arm the boat better than we can the helicopter. We're limited to weapons we can physically carry, so if we see it from the air, one of us has to lean out and shoot at it. You don't want a rocket launcher going off inside a copter. The exhaust gases would cook us as dead as if we got hit by the rocket itself."

"There's a pleasant image. Why the limits on weaponry?"

"Well. Even in sim, you have to think about what the real situation is like. This thing is bigger and stronger and faster than we are, and we can't just lob a nuke at it, 'cause we don't have one vis a vis the hardware and software we are up against." He stepped out of the car and looked at the shore. He pulled a GPS handheld from his jacket and consulted it. "This is a cheat in this scenario," he said. "I should be looking at a paper map, since there are no global positioning satellites in this time. But we can get away with this. Not with a Seawolf-class sub, though. Too bad. And I'm not really sure this body of water would be here, either. My knowledge of geological history is not that great."

Saji climbed out of the car, stretched, and said, "Where is here?"

"Coast of France. What will be Great Britain is over the horizon thataway."

"So in RW, that's where the trail leads?"

"That's what it looks like, yeah."

"Is that any help to your theory?"

Jay nodded. "Yeah. Maybe."

"Are we going after it?"

"Oh, yeah. I want to drop out of VR for a while to check some stuff and give the boss a call, first. I think it would be a good idea to run my theory past him. Just in case."

In the MI-6 conference room, Michaels sat waiting for Jay's visual to appear on the call-waiting holoproj that floated bluely over the table. With him were Toni, Howard, Fernandez, and Angela Cooper.

Michaels said, "I wanted you all to hear this, so I had them route Jay's com in here. We'll get to him in a minute. Any other business in the meanwhile?"

Howard said, "We've got an appointment to see the retired major out at his employer's estate in…" he looked down at his flatscreen."… in Sussex this afternoon."

"A lovely drive," Angela said. "Beautiful country, if somewhat narrow roads."

"No more attacks on major webs or military systems to note," Toni said. "Looks as if our hacker has backed off, at least for the time being."

"I'll take any good news I can get," Michaels said. "Let's get Jay off hold."

The holoproj flickered, and Jay Gridley's face appeared in the air. "Hey, boss." His voice sounded almost normal, just a trace of a slur. He was recovering fast.

"Jay. This is Angela Cooper, of MI-6. You know everybody else."

Jay murmured greetings.

"Okay, tell us what you've got."

Jay sighed. "Well, it's not much. We — I have been on the program's track, and it looks as if it's leading in your direction. Could be passing through, could be it lives there, I dunno. I'll get back after it as soon as we discom.

"I've been thinking about the problem. No working computers we know about could brute force prime number encoding the way this thing has, even working in multiple-series-parallel, so it's got to be something else. The first thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself what kind of computer could do it is, of course, a QC — a quantum computer. We talked about that before. The thing is, none of those are past the small experimental stages, so none of them would have the power needed to pull off what has happened."

"I'm dense," Fernandez said. "What is a quantum computer?"

Jay gave them a short lecture, explaining about Qubits and multiple quantum states. Michaels was familiar with the concept, but, as Jay had pointed out, nobody had come up with a full-size working QC, so it wasn't something they had seriously considered.

"But what if somebody had one?" Jay continued. "A fully operational model? Something with a hundred or two hundred Qubits? It would blow through prime-number encryptions like a tornado through a straw house."

"Big if," Toni said.

"Yeah, but I've done a little poking around. None of the various militaries and corps who have gone to the new AMPD standard — that's abstract multidimensional point-distance encryption — were bothered by these attacks. Could be coincidence, but a QC wouldn't be able to crack those. It wouldn't matter how fast it could crunch numbers, AMPD standard would be immune. Of course, only a handful of people have shifted to the new method."

"All right," Michaels said. "But if somebody had created such a thing, wouldn't we know about it?"

"Eventually. You couldn't keep it hidden forever, but maybe you could for a while. The technology and gear necessary wouldn't be something you could cook up in a high school computer lab or in the corner of your Uncle Albert's electronics hobby shop. We're talking a multimillion-dollar operation, custom-made hardware, lots of bells and whistles, a support staff, programmers, all like that. Sooner or later, somebody will stumble into this from outside; it's not something you can hide with a piece of camo net. But even if you knew where it was, as long as it was the only one out there, it'd sure be a big damned wolf among the sheep."

"A QC seems kind of slim," Toni said. "Any corroborative information?"

"Nothing I can lay on a table and prove," Jay said. "Then again, if such a thing existed, it would perfectly fit the parameters."

"And in your expert opinion, this is what you think it is?" That from Howard.

"Yes, sir. Nothing else comes close. I've searched the web and found everybody serious who's ever published anything in the field. On the list are a couple of guys in the U.K. One of whom — a man named Peter Bascomb-Coombs — did some flat-out brilliant theoretical work a couple of years back. He's head and shoulders above most, and I can't begin to stay with him. I don't even know anybody who can stay with him. He used to be in London, but he's dropped out of sight."

Howard said, "Are we looking at him as somebody to help us out? Or as a suspect?"

"Either way, I'd talk to him if I was there. I can't find a public e-address for him. It seems odd a guy that sharp would just disappear. He was too young to retire, and if he'd croaked, there would have been something about it in the news."

"Give us what you have on him, and we'll check it out locally," Michaels said.

"Already uploaded," Jay said. There was a short pause, then he said, "I've got to get back to the hunt. I think I'm gonna be able to run this beast down. I'm close."

"Be careful, Jay," Toni said. There was no need to remind him why. If anybody knew, he did.

"Yeah. Thanks. I'll keep you posted."

Angela had been tapping commands into her flatscreen, and she looked up as Jay discommed. "Got the information about Mr. Bascomb-Coombs. I'm running a search… hello?"

"What?" Michaels said.

"Here's our man," she said. "Employed by ComCo U.K. They are a privately held computer company that produces, among other things, high-end workstation motherboards."

"He's a computer geek working for a computer company," Fernandez said. "Is this a big surprise?"

"Not in itself, no," she said. "But ComCo U.K. is owned by Lord Geoffrey Goswell."

Where had he heard that name before? Michaels wondered. Then he remembered.

Howard beat him to saying it. "Is that the same guy whose security chief is the one in the store with our assassin and the dead guy?"

"Yes," Angela said.

"Well, well." Howard said. "Small world."

"Probably doesn't mean anything," Angela continued. "Goswell owns several companies and has thousands of employees scattered all over the country. Anywhere you go in England, Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, you are apt to run into somebody who works for him or who knows somebody who works for him."

Michaels shook his head. He didn't like coincidences. Stranger things had surely happened, but this had a fishy smell all of a sudden. "Tell you what, put off that interview with Peel for now. Pretend it was nothing, tell him you've gotten things resolved, you'll call him back later if you need to see him. I think we need to know a little more about his boss before we go blundering into his den."

Howard nodded, as did Fernandez and Toni. Angela gave him a small smile, and he felt his heart stumble and bang into the wall of his chest. He did not look at Toni. He couldn't take the risk.

As he drove away along Old Kent Road, passing the gasworks, Peel was royally pissed. Bascomb-Coombs had taken the day off yesterday, and when he'd gone to find the man, he'd missed him. According to his operatives, Bascomb-Coombs was not in evidence at his flat nor did he have his automobile, which was parked at his garage where it had been all day. He was not answering his phone, either.

Another pass by the office suite was also a waste of time.

Where the devil was he?

It was his own fault, Peel knew. He had pulled his men off because he wanted to deal with Bascomb-Coombs himself. He did not want them around when he did it, and so when the bastard went missing, he had no one to blame save himself. Where had the bugger gone? And why?

His phone chimed at him.

"Hello, Peel here."

"Major Peel? Angela Cooper here."

The woman from Intelligence. Another brick on his already overloaded lorry. They called him from time to time about all that Irish business. Whenever some flaming shanty potato-eater blew something up, they always called, as if Peel were somehow responsible for those lunatics. "Ms. Cooper. I haven't forgotten our appointment this afternoon."

"As it happens, sir, we won't be needing to speak to you after all. The, ah, matter at hand has resolved itself. Sorry to have bothered you."

Thank God for tiny favors. At least he wouldn't have to deal with these bloody idiots again. "Quite all right."

"I'll ring off now. Thank you for your cooperation."

After the disconnect, Peel looked in his rearview mirror to make certain he had not lost Ruzhyo. He had not.

Well, where to now, Peel, old man? Our rogue scientist seems to have flown the coop. He's not at his digs or usual haunts, and surely that only confirms it. He's lied to you, tried to have you offed, and cheated you out of a million EUs as well. Best you find him and take care of the problem before it gets worse.

Easier said, however, than done.

It was a warm and sunny day, and Howard, in civilian clothes, strolled along the sidewalks a few blocks from MI-6's HQ, enjoying the weather and city. London was quite a cosmopolitan place. People walked past in strange outfits, speaking foreign languages, looking very much at home in the English city.

Next to him, also dressed in civvies, Julio smiled at a pair of teenage girls wearing microskirts and platform shoes with soles as thick as a Washington, D.C., phone book. The girls smiled back at Julio and gave Howard a long and appraising look. Christ, both men were old enough to be their fathers. And if they fell off those monster shoes, they'd surely break an ankle or worse. Howard raised an eyebrow at his sergeant.

"Hey, you know what they say, a thing of beauty is a joy forever."

"And jailbait is jailbait no matter where you go. Aren't you getting a son and a wife soon?"

"You need to loosen up, John. Looking isn't the same as doing."

"You've been a bachelor for a long time, Julio. You sure you are going to be able to make the transition?"

"To be absolutely honest, I don't know. I think so. I'm gonna give it my best shot. But you know as well as I do that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy."

"You looking at marriage like a war, Sergeant?"

"Not exactly a war, but certainly unfamiliar territory. I mean, I love Jo, I want to wake up next to her every morning, and she's gonna be the mother of my child, but I'm not some eighteen-year-old recruit fresh off the farm and never been to town."

"That's for sure." He let that sit for a while, then said, "So what do you think about this business?"

He shrugged. "This Goswell guy being part of the old boy network and above reproach and all that doesn't sound all that different from home. Maybe he doesn't have anything to do with anything. But every rich and famous businessman or politician I ever heard of who got a bright light shined into his closet showed some skeletons hanging in the back. And it seems real odd to me that our ice man Ruzhyo is hooked up with this major who works for Mr. High and Mighty."

"That's how I see it, too."

A gorgeous, cafe-au-lait woman in a black and red silk dress strode along the sidewalk toward them. With the heels she was wearing, she was a couple of inches over six feet, easy. A model, maybe. She went past them in a subtle cloud of expensive perfume. Julio turned to watch her, and Howard glanced over his shoulder, trying to be unobtrusive about it.

"Looks good from the back," Julio said. "Wouldn't you say, Colonel?"

He'd noticed Howard's quick glance.

He smiled, caught. "I have to admit she does."

"Married as you are and all?"

Howard just grinned.

"So, what now, John?"

"We let British Intelligence gather everything they think we ought to know, and then we see what's what. Then we take care of it and go home. All these women make me miss my wife."

Fernandez laughed. "I hear that."

Chapter 36

When Toni came back from the loo into the conference room, Alex and Cooper stood at the end of the conference table, talking. They almost literally had their heads together, close enough to be breathing each other's air.

Toni felt a pang of jealousy. They looked up, saw her, but didn't move. That was good. If they had jumped apart when they saw her, that would have been something to worry about. Still, she didn't have any reason to be uneasy. She knew Alex.

"Anything new?" she asked.

"We've got the intel on Goswell and Peel," Alex said. "And some interesting developments. Colonel Howard and Sergeant Fernandez are on their way here."

Even as he said it, the two men arrived.

"Angela, if you would?"

Cooper stood as the others took their seats. She touched her flatscreen and a projection lit over the conference table.

"Lord Geoffrey Goswell's estate in Sussex," she began. "It's called The Yews. He spends most of his time there. The place sits on several hundred acres that include the main house, smaller cottages, and various out-buildings."

More images flashed into view.

"Except for staff, his lordship — he's a widower — lives there alone. He has places in London, Brighton, Manchester, a villa in the south of France, and various houses or condominiums in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, India, and the United States. Here is a list of the companies he owns all or part of. His personal fortune is estimated at just under two billion."

"Must be hard," Fernandez allowed.

Cooper continued: "Peel, whom we've discussed at some length before, heads Goswell's personal security. He's got anywhere from half a dozen to ten men, all ex-military, all heavily armed, patrolling the estate at any given time."

"I thought guns were more or less illegal here," Howard said.

Cooper said, "For ordinary citizens, yes. No handguns, and all rifles and shotguns must be locked up except when actually in use for target shooting or hunting. No military-style assault weapons allowed in any case."

Fernandez said, "Let me guess: When you have a couple billion in the old piggy bank, the rules are different, right?"

Cooper gave him a tight smile. "Just so."

"Please continue," Alex said. "Let's keep the editorial comments down, shall we?"

"We've put a couple of teams on the roads leading to the estate, and less than an hour ago, a rental car arrived there. A check of the car agency records indicate it was rented yesterday in Southampton by Peter Bascomb-Coombs. Our operatives managed to get a blurry picture of the driver, and it appears to be the computer scientist."

That got a nice reaction.

"Major Peel, also under surveillance, is currently en route to Sussex on his way from London. It will take him another hour or so to get there."

"No sign of Ruzhyo?" Howard asked.

"No."

"Could he be at the estate?" "It is possible," Cooper allowed. "We won't have any spysats in position to footprint the area for another ninety minutes. Even so, and even if he is strolling on the grounds, we would be hard-pressed to identify him from that alone. We have, under the aegis of national security, tapped the landlines into the estate, as well as having scanners recording wireless activity."

"Must be nice to be able to get a wiretap that easy," Alex said.

"It was not exactly easy," Cooper said. "But so far, nothing of importance has been forthcoming. And essentially, that is the situation as we now know it."

"Sounds like most of the eggs are in the basket to me. We need to take a little run out there and have a chat with some folks," Fernandez said.

Cooper stared at the holoproj image, then down at the table. She looked uncomfortable, a thing that didn't bother Toni much. Cooper said, "Well, yes, that would be the logical next step."

"But…?" Howard said.

"This is a bit awkward," she said. "We can't just pop out and do that."

"Why not?" Toni asked. "We have a suspect in the computer crime that has rattled half the planet, and we know where he is. I can't believe you don't want to have a few words with him. And with the guy who he works for, too."

Toni saw Julio and John Howard nod in agreement, and Alex also looked ready to hear her answer.

Cooper said, "This is true. However, things aren't done that way here. What if you were in the States and you suddenly had to question a billionaire who was also a powerful political figure? A senator or even the President? You couldn't just knock on his door and demand to come in, could you?"

"No," Alex said. "But if we had enough reason to suspect he was involved in a major crime, in which hundreds of people were killed as a result of something he did or had done, we could get a judge to issue a search or an arrest warrant. We've had our President testify when he didn't want to. Even impeached."

"After weeks of consultation with his lawyers," Cooper said. "And the impeachment was a wrist slap — he wasn't tried and found guilty, was he?"

"The effort was made," Alex said. "No man is above the law."

"Men are not above the law here, either, Alex, but this is a small country, and despite our attempts to bring it into the twenty-first century, still very caste-conscious. Lord Goswell is at the acme of power here. He went to school with the senior members of the House of Lords. He knows the blue blood wealthy, he knows the most powerful barristers and solicitors, and he knows the judges, the high police officials. Every couple of weeks he has tea with the head of the Conservative government. He can get more done with a wave of his hand than Parliament can do in a week. He plays bridge with the king. Getting the wire- and wavetaps were small miracles and were managed only because Goswell didn't know about them. This is not a man upon whose door you knock and demand anything. If you want to go and beard this lion in his den, you need to enter into negotiations with a delicate touch, your hat in hand. It's one thing to call up and tell his head of security you are going to drop round for a chat; it is quite another to demand the same of one of the richest and most powerful men in the country."

Nobody had anything to say about that for a moment.

"Bullshit," Julio said.

Toni suppressed her smile. She had to agree with that one.

"That may be, Sergeant, but I am here to say that His Majesty's government will not be approaching Lord Goswell, save through his attorneys, and cautiously, at that."

"Even if we suspect he's involved in the computer assaults?" Toni said.

Cooper turned to face Toni. "Even if we knew for sure he was responsible and could prove it, Ms. Fiorella. Which we do not. We have no real evidence other than some very thin circumstantial material: Bascomb-Coombs, who might or might not be involved himself, works for Lord Goswell and is there visiting him. That doesn't prove much of anything, now does it?"

Toni knew that Cooper was right. But she also knew in her gut that Bascomb-Coombs was tied into this, and Peel and Ruzhyo were somehow connected to it. But what could they do if the local authorities wouldn't let them even talk to the parties?

Alex said, "We can't barge into his lordship's house without an engraved invitation. All right. Can we short-stop Peel?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Can you have your field ops pull Peel over and keep him from getting back to the safety of Goswell's estate?"

Cooper stared at him. "Why would we want to do that?"

Alex said, "Okay, follow my logic here. Let's suppose that Bascomb-Coombs is responsible for the computer disruptions."

"All right, for the moment let's assume that."

"If he is, he has to be doing it with help. According to Jay Gridley, this isn't something you can do cheaply, so somebody substantial has to be backing him."

"Yes. So?"

"Occam's razor. He's working for Goswell. He's at Goswell's house. How many people can fund a multimillion-dollar project and keep it secret? Wouldn't that have to be somebody with a lot of clout? Like somebody who owns lock, stock, and barrel a high-end computer company? That gives us Goswell. And wouldn't Goswell's chief of personal security have to have some idea who Bascomb-Coombs was? Any op worth his pay-check would surely run background checks on people who cozied up to his boss. If it was me watching over a rich man's health, I'd want to know everything about everybody who walked in the door. I'd make it my business to know what visitors had for breakfast, where they ate it, and how big a tip they left."

"You're saying that Bascomb-Coombs is the mad hacker, that Goswell knows about it, and that Peel also knows. Your logical chain is weak, even assuming the first link in it is as solid as steel."

"Stands to reason if they are all sitting around having tea together, doesn't it?"

Cooper gave him a small smile. "Come now, Alex, people who have tea together don't share all their secrets, do they?"

Alex flushed. John Howard turned and suddenly found a fascinating spot on the empty wall to stare at. Cooper's smile grew bigger and warmer. These actions didn't prove anything, but taken together, on a sudden, deeply intuitional level, an icicle of solid nitrogen formed and stabbed Toni in the heart:

My God. Had Alex slept with this bitch?

How? When?

God in heaven — why?

Alex cleared his throat and said, "Look, we know Peel is connected to Ruzhyo and the death of a suspected ice man."

"The fellow in the bookstore was, according to the coroner, a suicide."

"After Ruzhyo or Peel shot him! Peel knows something about all this. You know I'm right. Pull him in and let's sweat him before more people die and millions of lives are disrupted."

There was a long pause. Toni stared at Cooper with the new suspicion still piercing her to her soul. All of the rest of this was nothing. It didn't matter about Peel or Goswell or Ruzhyo. None of that was important.

Had Alex betrayed her? Surely not. He couldn't have. Could he?

She felt sick.

Cooper said, "All right. I'll have to get DG Hamilton to sign off on it, but I suspect we can do that much in the interests of national security."

Chapter 37

Ruzhyo took a couple of deep breaths and blew them out, trying to relax. He had been growing more tight as he drove, gripping the wheel harder, hunching forward, and that wouldn't do, to be tense when he needed to be loose. A tight man could not move properly. Even knowing that, it always happened. You had to work to overcome it, despite all the years and bodies.

Ahead of him and one lane over, the gray Neon with the two men in it who had been following Peel since London cruised fifty meters behind the major's car, using traffic as cover. So intent on tailing Peel had they been, they had not noticed Ruzhyo.

As soon as he had spotted them, Ruzhyo had made the call and had spoken but one word: "Company." That had been enough to alert Peel.

He'd replied. "Got it. I'll call back later."

They had passed Gatwick Airport a few miles back, still heading south on the big motorway as if going to the Sussex estate. The mobile phone on the car seat next to him rang. Ruzhyo picked it up. "Go ahead."

"Have they made you?"

"No."

"Good. We're getting off at the next exit, about two miles ahead, heading east. Down that road three miles, there is a large oak tree at an intersection with a narrow road to the right. Two miles down that road, on the left is a big sheering barn. We'll have a chat with our company there. Why don't you go on ahead and get set up?"

"Yes."

Ruzhyo thumbed the connection off. He accelerated and pulled smoothly ahead of the surveillance car, passed Peel, and was half a mile ahead of them when he turned off the highway at the next exit. The shadowers paid him no attention.

The oak tree was where it was supposed to be — Ruzhyo measured the distance with his odometer — and the barn, in front of a field of grazing sheep, sat alone and quiet in the middle of a long stretch of nowhere. A perfect place to have a chat you didn't want anyone to overhear.

Ruzhyo pulled his car into the barn and shut the door behind it. The place was dusty and smelled of dry hay, wool, and something like hot candle wax. Farm smells, bringing with them quick lances of memory from his days with Anna. He checked out the exits. There were two more at ground level besides the one he'd pulled the car into, and two openings on the upper level, with hoists and ropes and pulleys dangling from them. Peel was a professional; he would pull his car in and get out in such a way as to allow somebody hiding in the barn a clear shot at his followers when they left their car. Probably in front of the smaller door on the building's southeast side, he figured.

Ruzhyo checked the magazine in the Firestar, making certain that a round was chambered. He cocked the hammer and put the safety back on. There might not be any shooting at all; if it became necessary, he had eight shots, and seven more rounds in a second magazine, if he had to reload. No semi auto was jam-proof, but he had adjusted the magazines and polished the feed ramp, and the bullet ogive was clean and rounded enough so there shouldn't be a problem. After firing a few rounds when he'd gotten the piece, he had hand-cycled a hundred cartridges through the action without a misfeed. At this range, if he had to shoot, he'd only need a few to work, and the first one was already there.

He heard the sound of an approaching engine, easily discerned in the quiet pastures. He took another deep breath and let it out, stretched his neck, and rolled his shoulders. He was ready. He would follow Peel's lead.

Peel pulled his car onto the hard-packed dirt next to the barn and circled to his left to force the following car to pull in between him and the building. He stopped, loosened his pistol in its holster, and alighted from his car. He kept the door open and stood partially covered by it. He didn't see Ruzhyo, but he had noticed the fresh tire prints leading to the barn, so he knew the man was in there. If it was him, Peel would set up behind that door right across from his car, and he bet that the ex-Spetsnaz shooter was already there. He felt a lot better having an old pro watching his arse.

The Neon pulled off the road and right into perfect position. The car stopped in a light cloud of dust, and as the reddish gray powder settled, two men got out. They wore windbreakers, and they had the moves of somebody carrying firearms, which they certainly had hidden under their jackets. But they didn't look like coppers, at least not civilian ones. One was a medium-tall brunette, the other a shorter, stockier man with mouse-brown hair cropped short. Were they military? Or Intelligence? What the bloody hell?

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. May I help you with something?"

Mouse-brown said, "Major Peel. We wonder if you would come along with us, sir." Not a question.

"If you'll explain who you are and what you want, maybe we can keep this civilized."

"We didn't come to answer questions. We'll send somebody for your car. You'll be riding with us."

"I shouldn't think I'd want to do that," he said.

"Then we must insist," Medium-tall said. "Please step over here, sir. And keep your hands in plain sight."

"Insist all you want. I'm minding my own business, and I don't believe it is any of yours."

The two exchanged glances, and without speaking, split up and drifted away from each other. This was standard procedure if you were facing a man you considered armed and dangerous. Even if he was very fast on the draw, he would have to swing his weapon from one to another with two opponents, and the farther apart they were, the harder that would be — especially if both opponents were prepared to shoot back. They still had not pulled their own weapons, and that was to his advantage.

"Let's not make this difficult, Major," Mouse-brown said.

"Gentlemen, I advise you to stand still and keep your hands away from your weapons."

Medium-tall grinned and said, "Begging your pardon, Major, but either one of us is ten years younger and ten years faster than you. You don't really think you're good enough to take us both?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. It would be more risky if I were alone."

Mouse-brown said, "There's no one else in your car, Peel. How stupid do you think we are?"

"Fairly stupid, I should say. Why do you think I stopped here, sonny? At this particular quiet spot in the country?"

Mouse-brown paused in his sideways drift and shot his partner a quick glance.

"He's having us on," Medium-tall said. "A bluff."

"You think so?" Peel said. He smiled. "You've been behind me since we left London. You think I didn't know that? I've had plenty of time to have a colleague arrive here. You seem like decent lads. Tell me who sent you and what you know, and perhaps you get to walk out of this. Otherwise…" he gave them a broad, theatrical shrug.

"Forget it," Medium-tall said. "We weren't born bloody yesterday!"

Peel raised his voice. "Mr. Ruzhyo! Are you there?"

The barn door swung up with a creak of rusted hinges and Ruzhyo appeared in the doorway, though he did not step out from his cover. "I am here," he said. He held the silvery pistol in both hands, pointed at Medium-tall.

The two men started, surprised.

Men who had been under the gun, under fire, would have known they didn't have a chance. You could be faster than Billy the Bloody Kid from the holster but that wouldn't be nearly quick enough to outdraw a gun already aimed at you.

The two panicked and went for their guns.

Ruzhyo had Medium-tall, so Mouse-brown was Peel's. But before he could clear his weapon, Ruzhyo fired—pow! pow! pow! the tiniest hesitation, then pow! pow! pow! again. Six rounds at maybe five meters, and it was so quick it sounded like two bursts of fully automatic submachine gun fire. Damn, he was fast!

Medium-tall and Mouse-brown went down like sick-led wheat.

"Shit!" Peel yelled. He finished his draw and hurried toward the downed men. Both were wearing body armor under their jackets, he could see that as he got close. The vests had stopped two rounds each, just as they were supposed to. But the armor had not stopped the rest of Ruzhyo's Mozambique drill: two to the chest and one to the head. Both men had been shot between the eyes, and they were effectively dead before they hit the ground. Peel had never seen the drill performed better, not even in practice, much less in a hot scenario. Ruzhyo was a master shooter.

"Damn, how am I supposed to find out anything if you don't leave one alive to question?"

Ruzhyo gave him a Slavic shrug. He popped the magazine from the pistol, let it fall to the ground, reloaded the handgun with a second magazine from his pocket, then bent to pick up the fallen magazine. When he straightened, he reached up with one hand and pried a silicone ear plug from one ear, then the other, and dropped those into his pocket along with the nearly empty magazine.

Good God. Ruzhyo was so cool as to think about bloody ear protection before he had calmly blasted two armed men as neat and quick as you could possibly please. The man must have ice water in his veins.

Well, there was not any help for it now. Best find out who these two were, if he could. Peel fished in Medium-tall's pocket until he found a wallet. He opened it, then stared at the ID card behind the clear plastic window. "Oh, Lord! These blokes are MI-6! We've just killed two of his majesty's SIS agents!"

Ruzhyo shrugged again, scanning the countryside for witnesses.

Aside from the sheep, who seemed unaffected by the gunshots, there weren't any prying eyes.

Peel shook his head. "Come on, help me move the bodies," Peel said. "We've only got a few minutes before they are missed."

They were in the crapper now, weren't they?

"We have a problem," Cooper told Michaels. "We've lost contact with the team following Peel."

Howard, Fernandez, and Toni had gone to the cafeteria to grab a quick bite, and Michaels was once again alone with Cooper in the conference room. "Lost contact with them?"

"More than half an hour ago. Their last report was that they had pulled off the M23 near Balcombe and were about to detain Peel. We've been unsuccessful in our attempts to reach them since."

"Do you have a way to find them?"

"Not exactly. The location transponder in their car stopped sending its signal a few minutes after their last transmission. We know where they were. We've sent a military strike team via helicopter to check it out."

"They're either taken or dead," he said flatly.

"We don't know that."

"You wouldn't have scrambled an air strike team if you didn't think it was likely."

She sighed. Put one hand on his forearm. Her touch was warm. "We do fear something has gone awry."

He stared at her hand. After a beat, she broke the contact. "No chance for us, is there?"

"I — it wouldn't be a good idea. I'm sorry."

"But you did enjoy yourself? As far as it went?"

"Ah… yes. I did."

She smiled, but it was hollow. "The good ones always get away. A pity. Your Ms. Fiorella is lucky, you know."

"I think I'm the lucky one."

She stepped back, out of his space, and glanced at her watch. "Should be hearing from the strike team shortly."

"Can we still stop Peel? If he is on his way to Goswell's estate?"

"Given the current situation, I doubt that DG Hamilton would want to risk another team. It would be safer to bottle him up at The Yews, if that's where he's going, and deal with him later.

In the MI-6 cafeteria, Fernandez swallowed a bite of what looked like Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes drenched by a half gallon of brown gravy and said, "What's with the sub-commander?"

Fiorella had come to the cafeteria with Howard and Fernandez, but had quickly excused herself and left, looking pale.

Howard glanced down at his Thai chicken salad. He wasn't a gossip, but he had known Julio all of his adult life; the two of them didn't have many secrets from each other. And from Toni's face, the nickel had dropped. She had figured out about Michaels' extracurricular activities. Howard didn't need to get that specific, though, so he said, "I think she and the commander might be having some personal problems."

Julio washed another bite down with a glass of water and nodded. "Cooper," he said. "Boss got biblical with her?"

Howard raised an eyebrow.

"She's gorgeous, smart, and she's been giving him looks," Julio went on. "And the boss stares at his shoes every time Cooper gets too close. She looks possessive and he looks guilty. And that looks like a done deal to me. Not that I'm telling you anything you don't already know. You picked it up."

Howard nodded. "Yes."

Julio took another mouthful of the brown and steaming goop. "I don't understand what all the fuss about how bad British cooking is about. Nothing wrong with it far as I can tell," he said.

"Spoken like a true meat and potatoes man."

"Yeah, well, Br'er Rabbit, why don't you have some more of that grass and twigs you got."

A young man approached the table. "Colonel Howard? Commander Michaels would like to see you, sir, as soon as possible."

Julio shoveled another mouthful in, hurrying, as Howard nodded once and got to his feet. Now what?

Chapter 38

MI-6 had sprung for a second copter, and it landed with Alex, Howard, Fernandez, Cooper, and Toni. The strike force copter was still on the ground, and a dozen soldiers in Brit camo and berets, weapons at the ready, moved around the big old barn as the Net Force team piled out of the second bird into the dusty prop wash.

Toni had tucked her personal pain away into the box of professionalism and locked it tight. Even so, she hadn't been able to look directly at Alex during the short flight.

A British captain approached and spoke with Cooper. Toni walked around, bent to examine the ground in a couple of spots, then drifted toward the barn. There was a new car parked inside, and it hadn't been there long enough to get dusty. The floor was earth, under a light layer of dry hay. She walked back out and circled the area again. The ground was soft and chalky enough in places to take footprints, but the military force had obliterated a lot of them, their combat boots leaving a distinctive tread. She thought about what might have happened here, given what she knew and what she had seen.

Alex said, "Toni?" He stood next to Cooper and the British captain.

She could do this. She could keep her feelings at bay and do her job.

"This is Captain Ward," Alex said.

Cooper said, "Why don't you bring Sub-Commander Fiorella up to speed on what you think might have happened here, Captain?"

A flash of anger enveloped Toni. Bring her up to fucking speed? Yeah, right. She wanted to smash Cooper's smug face. Instead, she tamped it down and said, "It's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

Cooper blinked. Did she hear the challenge in Toni's voice? "Oh, really? Why don't you tell us, then?" Yeah, she heard it.

"Sure. Peel had a backup man. That's his car in the barn. It will be a rental and won't have a backtrail. Probably some dummy corporation post office box and phony ID used to get it.

"Your agents must have missed the backup. Odds are it was Mikhayl Ruzhyo, who must have some kind of link to Peel. Maybe they were old college buddies or they met in some police action in Africa or SA somewhere. They have history. Otherwise, it's too coincidental.

"Peel led your men here, right into a trap. Ruzhyo sneaked up on them — no, strike that, you couldn't really sneak up on this barn from the road in a car, and it's too far from anywhere to walk, so probably he was already hiding when Peel arrived. How am I doing so far?" She looked at Alex and his face was frozen into a half-grin. He felt her anger, she knew. She nodded at him. I know, you bastard. And now you know I know.

Cooper didn't speak, nor did Alex or the captain, so Toni continued: "There are two small spots of blood on the ground, still visible, though somebody kicked dirt over them, there and over there." She pointed. "Were your men armed? And wearing body armor?"

Cooper just glared at her, and it was the captain who said, "They carried sidearms, and as for the vests, yes, they should have worn them. It's standard for this kind of operation."

"Right. So Peel or Ruzhyo shot them, most likely in the heads. That's where they fell. Then they shoved the bodies into their own car and left here driving that and Peel's. I imagine if your troops haven't stomped all over them, you'll find his tire tracks and those of your men's car leaving. By now, I'd guess they've driven the car with the bodies in it somewhere it won't be found for a while. Two missing agents are a concern, but not as high-profile as two dead ones. If I were in charge, I'd have the local constables drag any big ponds or lakes within a few miles of here. Deep water is a good place to hide a car."

The captain shook his head. "Overall, it's a bit of a stretch, isn't it? Aside from the blood, we found no other evidence. There weren't any shell casings."

"Ruzhyo would have picked his up, and I'm assuming Peel is smart enough to have done the same. By the time we catch up to them, the guns used will be long gone, anyway. I don't know much about your Major Peel, but Ruzhyo is very much a professional. He doesn't leave you much to work with."

Ward nodded, as if confirming that he wasn't as concerned with her explanation as that he wanted to hear her reasoning for it. "The scenario you postulate is not impossible. As soon as he figured out with whom he was dealing, Peel would have known about the transponder in their car and disabled it. We've set up road blocks, but we may be behind the curve here."

We're behind the curve, all right. Toni gathered herself and gave Cooper the sweetest smile she could form. "Anything else you need to know, Ms. Cooper?"

"Not at the moment, Ms. Fiorella." Cooper gave Alex a quick look, and in it Toni saw a measure of what she thought might be concern. Pity, even.

So, Cooper had figured out that Toni knew, too. And the British tart was feeling sympathy for Alex because of it. Great. Now we're all just one big, unhappy fucking family.

Michaels pulled his virgil and put in a priority call to Jay Gridley.

"Yeah, boss, what's up?"

"If I gave you an address, a physical address for where this QC hardware might be, would that help you search?"

"Couldn't hurt. Might be able to spot a trail if I'm close enough to it, though there's no guarantee."

"Stand by, I'm uploading it now. We found Bascomb-Coombs and where he works. We can't lay our hands on him just at the moment, but maybe you can figure out something from your end."

"Thanks, boss."

"Be careful, Jay."

"I copy that, decibel and crystal. Discom."

Michaels walked to where Cooper stood. "Does this change things? Can we go to Goswell's and grab Peel?"

"I can check with the DG, but I'm afraid it won't matter. We have missing agents, but not much to tie them to his lordship or even to Peel. For all we know, Peel drove off before they could speak to him, and our men were coincidentally attacked by sheep rustlers."

"Yeah, right."

"Sorry, Alex, but that's how it is. Our hands are tied."

On their way back to the helicopter, Michaels lagged behind. "Hold up a second, Colonel."

Howard slowed.

"Cooper says MI-6's hands are tied. They can't go traipsing into Lord Goswell's estate without an engraved invitation."

"Wonderful," Howard said. His voice dripped sarcasm.

"Colonel, I don't know how good your grapevine is, but I've put you up for a promotion."

Howard hesitated a second, then said, "I had heard the rumor, Commander. Thank you, I appreciate it."

"I mention this only because an international diplomatic incident might squash your chances. Probably would."

Howard grinned. "If that would let me catch Ruzhyo and this mad hacker, I could live with it."

Michaels smiled back at him. "Somehow I knew you'd feel that way. When we get back to MI-6, I think our crew needs to take a break. Go for a ride in the country or something."

"Yes, sir."

Michaels looked at the copter, squinting against the dust blown up by the prop wash. Most of the time, he colored between the lines. Now and then, he had to go outside the boundaries. There was a difference between justice and the law, and sometimes the end did justify the means. Generally, in his line of work, if you took a risk out in territory where your ass was bare and you pulled it off, you could rationalize it afterward. If you failed, you got skewered. They were hunting terrorists, killers both by remote means and with their own hands. The worst that could happen to Michaels if he screwed this up was that they'd fire him in disgrace and put him in jail for twenty or thirty years.

As he watched Toni climb into the helicopter, pointedly not looking at him, he knew there were heavier prices to pay for screwing up — or, in this case, almost screwing somebody.

Maybe, if he was lucky, he'd get killed in this clandestine operation.

On foot, the rocket launcher slung over his shoulder, Jay sniffed the air. The usual jungle odors were there, and there was another smell that washed over the others, insistent in its demand to be noticed. Impossible to ignore, actually.

Next to him, Saji wrinkled her nose and said, "Lord, what is that stench?"

"Not to put too fine a point on it, it's monster shit."

He pointed.

Ahead of them was another thicket of prehistoric jungle, representing reams of coded packets, an electronic locus, a nexus that, in RW, corresponded to a computer company in London. Upon the path that led to that jungle, forming a rough triangle with two huge footprints, was a mound of scat, a pile of reeking excrement, brown, the size of a dumpster, and beset by a flock of busy flies.

Off to the sides of the path were a dozen or so other mounds, dried and hardened into the beginnings of giant coprolites. Welcome to Feek City.

The two of them circled around the fresh deposit. This close, they could see undigested bits of bone stuck in the pile, could feel the heat coming off it. The stink was so thick you could almost lean against it.

Jay said, "Not to pretend I'm any better at cutting sign or anything, but I'm pretty sure it went this way. And I'd bet it came out here to do its business because it lives in there."

Saji stared at the mound. She shook her head. "I don't much like the idea of going in there after it," she said.

Jay unshipped the rocket launcher. "Me, neither. Stand to the side there," he said. He shouldered the weapon, aimed it at the jungle, and squeezed the trigger. The rocket whooshed away on a flaming tail, arced into the woods, and blew apart in a fiery kaboom that spewed leaves and other bits of trees every which way.

"Couple more of those ought to get its attention," Jay said.

Peel alighted from his car and slammed the door shut a bit harder than necessary. He got a grip on his irritation, nodded at Huard, who was standing watch at the rear of the main house, then turned to watch as Ruzhyo got out of the passenger side. The car with the two dead agents in it, along with the gun that killed them, was at the bottom of a thirty-foot-deep sinkhole in a stock pond on one of his lordship's farms in East Sussex, not far from where they'd shot the pair. Well, where Ruzhyo had shot them. The SIS or local police would likely get around to finding the car and its cargo eventually, but probably not immediately. He should have plenty of time to clean up the loose ends and get the hell out of the country. A pity, that, but it was going to be too hot to stay, that was for certain. And while he wouldn't be getting that phantom fortune from the Indonesian bank, Goswell had a safe in his house that would surely yield running-away money. His plan was to ice Goswell, that bastard Bascomb-Coombs, and Ruzhyo — this last with great care, from behind, when he wasn't expecting it. Some artful arranging of the bodies so that it would seem as if the ex-Spetsnaz agent had killed the other two, then been shot by one of his men — Huard, say, who'd have to be iced as well — and Peel would be off. His situation was bad but not fatal, and while he would have preferred that things turned out differently, he could survive it. He was a trained soldier, an officer with command experience in the field. There was always a market for his services somewhere in the third world. He could train an army in one of the CIS countries, or command a battalion in central Africa, or work security for an Arab prince. War dogs were never completely out of fashion, no matter how peaceful things might be. You never knew but that your neighbor was eyeing your territory, and you had to be prepared to protect it, regardless of how wide his smile was or how open his hand seemed.

Not his first choice, but better than the options.

"Stay here and keep your eyes open," Peel told Ruzhyo.

Ruzhyo saluted with his rolled-up umbrella. He'd likely need that soon: The sky threatened rain, dark clouds rolling in from the North Atlantic in a cool front. Perfect, a storm to make things even gloomier.

Peel walked over to Huard. "Tell the boys to move out to the perimeter," he said. "We might have company. You watch the back door."

"Yes, sir."

Peel headed into the house. He would get it all done. And he'd wait until well after dark, so that he could take off on foot across the fields, just in case anybody was watching the estate. He had to figure that if they knew who he was, at least enough to have an SIS team on him, they knew who he worked for. They wouldn't storm the bloody gates at the Yews, oh, no, but they might be waiting for him to leave. If he hiked out on foot far enough, he could boost a car from one of the neighbors, drive to the south coast, and take one of Goswell's boats across the channel. There was no shame in retreating from a superior force. You could always regroup and come back later. A lost battle was not necessarily a lost war.

Goswell was having a drink in the sitting room. "Hello, Major."

"Your Lordship. Where is Mr. Bascomb-Coombs?"

"Down the hall, in the study, I believe. Playing with his portable computer. I had his access shut off to the special unit, but he has his way around that, I am sure. His portable computer peeped at him, he got quite agitated, and excused himself to go deal with whatever it was. A drink?"

"Splendid idea," he said. Applewhite materialized — too bad he would have to die as well, he liked old Applewhite — and Peel held up two fingers, to indicate the depth of his scotch. Oh, what the hell — he added a third finger. He had to last until dark, didn't he? And it had been a long and trying day. Nobody could blame him for needing a stiff drink.

A sudden breeze rattled the window casement, and the first drops of rain spattered on the glass. Well, it was going to be a stormy evening, to be sure, in more ways than one.

Chapter 39

The Net Force team rode in what Howard called his Mobile On-Scene Command Center — essentially a large RV he had hurriedly rented — with Julio Fernandez driving, and cursing as he did so: "Why don't you stupid bastards drive on the right side of the road!"

The rest of the Strike Team had already piled into cars and trucks at the military base and were on their way to the meeting place — in this case, a fire station in Sussex.

Howard had a computer set up on a small table, and Michaels and Toni sat next to it, watching. Howard brought up an image, an augmented aerial view of a big house and some smaller structures. "This is Goswell's place," he said.

"You get this from MI-6?" Michaels asked.

"No, sir. I had Big Squint — USAT — footprint it this morning."

"Before we knew we were going to do this?" Toni asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Never hurts to keep the six-P principle in mind."

Michaels nodded to himself. Everybody here knew what that meant: Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance. Howard was just doing his job.

Howard continued, "We'd be a lot better off if we had a couple of days to study things, to run tactical scenarios, and to play with alternative plans, but since we don't, we KISS it and hope for the best."

Another acronym: Keep it simple, stupid.

"Here's how I see it," Howard said. "We wait until after dark before we hit the place. My men do the tango with the estate's guards while Sergeant Fernandez and I and a couple of others hop the fence and head for the house. We set off some flash-bangs and some puke lights and take out any guards there, go in and round up everybody, haul the ones we want out, and hightail it for the border. Ruzhyo, Peel, and Bascomb-Coombs will do, and we can feed any incriminating information about Goswell back to our hosts later and let them deal with him if he's involved. With any luck, by the time the locals figure it out, we're on our plane and halfway across the ocean."

"One small addition," Michaels said. "I'll be going in with you. And yes, I know, it isn't the wisest course of action, but we've had this discussion before, and since I get the heat, I get to make that choice." He glanced at Toni, about to say that she'd be staying at the command center.

The look in Toni's eyes was reptilian. She knew what he was going to say. And he suddenly knew if he said it, whatever chance he might have of patching things up between them was going to die right here and now. So instead, he said, "And Toni will be going in, too."

She gave him a short nod. "Thank you." Her words were cool and crisp — you could use them to frost beer steins — but at least she was still talking to him. Better than nothing.

When they got to the fire station, near a little town called Cuckfield, the Net Force Strike Team was already there. But when Toni stepped out into the rainy evening, there was a surprise waiting under the overhang of a carport next to the main building: Angela Cooper was there, too. She wore combat camo, pants, shirt, and boots.

"Oh, shit," Fernandez said quietly. "Looks like the game is about to be canceled."

They moved to the carport, out of the weather. Alex stepped forward, but before he could speak, Cooper raised one hand to his objections. "If I wanted to stop you, Alex, I wouldn't be here alone."

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Officially, His Majesty's government cannot condone any action against Lord Goswell without much more evidence than we currently have. However, the DG and our MP know what we've found out and, unofficially, they believe what we all do — that Bascomb-Coombs is very likely responsible for the computer terrorism, and that Major Peel and Goswell are privy and part of it as well."

"So you've decided to look the other way?" Alex said.

"Yes. Provided we have an unofficial observer to make certain our unofficial position is kept, well, unofficial."

Toni said, "So we get to do the dirty work, take care of your problem, and if it all blows up in our faces, you get to keep your hands clean."

"Can't put anything past you, can we, Ms. Fiorella? Well, that's probably not strictly true, is it, Alex?"

Years of martial arts practice gave you a certain amount of physical self-control. If you knew you could seriously injure or kill somebody with your hands, elbows, knees, or feet, it tended to make you think before you made any sudden moves. You had to be able to move almost reflexively fast once the action started, but you also had to know when it was appropriate. Once, in college, a dorm mate had sneaked up behind Toni and grabbed her in the hallway, intending to tickle her. His practical joke had cost him a visit to the campus clinic and a concussion. It had taken her a few more years to get past the reactive stage, so she could usually assess the situation before decking somebody who didn't really mean her any harm.

That hard-won self-control was all that kept Toni from stepping forward and destroying Angela Cooper. She really wanted to do it, bad. Instead, she managed a smile. She said, "Oh, I'm a bit slow sometimes, but I eventually catch on."

"All right," Alex said. "Colonel Howard will run it down again. We've got a couple of hours until we go." He looked at Toni, shook his head a little, then gave her an open-handed "Sorry" shrug. He looked pale, almost gray, and she hoped he felt bad. He should.

Ruzhyo leaned against the stone wall of the big house under the substantial roof overhang. The wind had died pretty much as the rain began, and the gutters piped the water away to drain chains at the house's corners, so he was dry enough even in the damp evening. And he had his umbrella, of course, and a feeling he would be needing its hidden functions before the night was over. Intelligence services of every country he knew of took a dim view of anybody who killed any of their operatives. It was bad for business. Spetsnaz had always been notorious for its vengeance. Once, in one of the ever-troubled mideastern countries, one of their ops had been caught by a group of zealots, and slain. A week later, sixteen of those zealots were found lined up neatly in a ditch, their severed penises stuffed into their dead mouths, their eyes plucked out.

Kill one of ours, and we destroy a village of yours. It made even zealots think.

The British were more polite and less savage, but they would by now assume their men were dead, and they would know who was responsible. At least they would know of Peel, and if they knew enough to find and follow him, they doubtless knew for whom he worked and where his employer lived. Peel would realize this, and he would have a plan in place by now, a way to escape being captured.

Huard, dressed in rain gear, walked a circuit around the back of the house, looking at Ruzhyo but not speaking as he moved from sight. Huard didn't like him, but Huard was a child.

So, in Peel's shoes, what would he do? Flight was the only real option; even Goswell could not protect him if he stayed here. And timing was critical. Peel would have to disappear before things grew too warm. Were he Peel, he would already be gone. Certainly before morning light offered his pursuers too much help in spotting him. And he would wish to depart without any telltales left behind. Peel had sent his men to the property's borders, leaving only Huard and Ruzhyo here. They, along with everybody inside the house, were expendable. That's how Ruzhyo would see it in Peel's place.

So, sometime during the night, Peel would call him inside. Or perhaps use the com to tell Huard to do it, to kill him? No. He wouldn't trust Huard. And if the boy failed, his master would know that Ruzhyo would have to come for him.

Ruzhyo could simply disappear into the rainy darkness in a few more minutes. None of Peel's men would find him or stop him if they did find him. He could trek away, catch a ride, steal a car, and be in France tomorrow. This game was nearly over, and what was the point in waiting around for the expected end?

He mentally shrugged. No point at all, actually. And perhaps that was the reason. There was nowhere he had to be. One place was as good as another. Did it matter where the sands of one's hourglass ran out? In the end, did anything matter at all?

Next to the parked lorry, Howard slipped his helmet on, and checked the LOSIR com. "Perimeter team, sound off, by the numbers."

The Strike Team obediently replied. All ahead functions there.

"Entry team, sound off."

"This is E1, Cooper."

"E2, Michaels.

"E3, Fiorella."

"E4, Fernandez."

And he was E5. Five of them should be enough, if everybody did what they were supposed to do. He and Fernandez would work the heavy shots, and while Michaels and Fiorella weren't trained assault troopers, he'd seen them in action enough to know they had balls. The only unknown was Cooper, and if she was a field agent for MI-6, she ought to have at least some basic moves. It was hurried, it was slapdash, it was hung together with string and bubble gum, but it was what he had to work with, and it was about to be a go. They all wore the light SIPEsuit configuration, mostly just armor, corns, and the tactical comp to run the helmet. They all carried the simple but reliable H&K 9mm subguns and tactical pistols, save for Howard and his.357 revolver. And as soon as he'd brought that out, Julio had howled.

"Why, Katie Mae, I must be going blind," he'd said. "My tired old eyes completely shot. What is that ugly lump on top of the colonel's antique good luck charm? Is that a dot scope? It can't be!"

"Julio…

"No, I must be on drugs, or maybe just out of my mind. The Colonel John Howard I know would never in a million years upgrade to hardware just because it was state-of-the-art and useful!" He started looking up at the rainy sky.

"What are you looking for, Sergeant?"

"I dunno, sir. Some sign or portent. A big meteor about to fall on us, a gathering of angels, a rain of fire, something to let us know the end is near."

"Never let it be said that your commander is a total Luddite," Howard said. He smiled.

Now, they were on their way. They would split into two groups a couple of miles from here, the perimeter team would hit the gate, and they would go over the fence. Howard took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"All aboard," he said.

Peel glanced at his watch. Almost nine. Still raining, but not as hard as it had been, to judge from the sound on the slate roof. Bascomb-Coombs hadn't come out of the study; he was hunched over his computer, wearing a headset and finger bands, deep in some VR scenario. Well, fine. He could die never knowing what had hit him for all Peel cared, and good riddance.

Goswell had tottered off into the dining room for a late supper, and Peel had the sitting room to himself, working on his third scotch, a small one this time. He didn't want to drink too much. There was Ruzhyo to consider.

He'd have to get started soon, but he was stalling. Had to be done, of course, but there was a certain reluctance to get to it. Another page turning in the book of his life, and a big one. Ah, well. That's how it went. Win some, lose some, but the important thing was to live to fight another day.

He took another sip of his scotch.

The monster, which looked like a cross between Godzilla and a giant Spielbergian raptor, stomped out into the clearing that served as his toilet and let loose a bellow that shook fronds off the ferns. It was still pretty far away, a couple of hundred meters. Probably could cover that in maybe four or five seconds once he got moving good. One shot, maybe two.

"There he is," Jay said redundantly.

Saji looked up. "No shit."

Jay swallowed dryly, put the laser sight crosshair onto the monster's chest. The cross bounced around a little, but finally the holographic image blinked red, indicating that he had a lock. He jerked the trigger — and had a moment of panic as he feared he'd pulled it too hard.

The rocket streaked away, smacked into the monster's chest, and exploded.

When the fire and smoke cleared, the monster was knocked down.

"All right, Jay!" Saji yelled.

The triumph was short-lived. As they watched, the monster rolled, used its tail as a prop, and got back to its feet. It looked around for the source of the attack.

Ohhhh, shit!

Saji was already shoving another rocket into the bazooka-style launcher before Jay could speak. She slapped him on the shoulder. "Loaded!"

The rocket lanced into the beast again. Boom! Again, it knocked the thing asprawl.

Then it climbed back to its feet again, and roared loudly enough to wake everything that had died since the beginning of time. It leaned forward, stuck its big tail straight out behind it, and spotted Jay and Saji. It looked like a giant hunting dog on point at a covey of quail.

Man! At least it was having an effect. Thing was, they had one more rocket and then the party was over. They could bail from VR if it got too close, and they'd sure as hell have to do that. Given what the little tiger had done to Jay's brain, he had a feeling that if this beastie got its claws on them, VR image or not, they would be in real physical jeopardy. If they had to bail, the thing would win, and Jay did not want to let it do that. More than anything he had ever wanted in his life, he wanted to beat this thing. Not just beat it, but to kick its ass seven ways from Sunday, to stomp the crap out of it big time.

But it didn't look good for the home team, no sir.

"Reloaded!"

Jay took a deep breath and readied his last shot.

Sure enough, Bascomb-Coombs was still there in the study, waving his hands around, wiggling his fingers, and directing some unseen computer wizardry. Peel glanced up and down the hall. No one around. He slipped into the room. He pulled the small Cold Steel Culloden boot knife from the sheath on his belt. The knife was short, pointed like a stiletto, with a hard, rubbery handle that gripped well. He stepped up behind the computer scientist, reached out, caught his forehead with his left hand, then drove the knife into the base of his skull with his right. Bascomb-Coombs stiffened.

The monster opened its toothy mouth, flashed fangs the length of a man's forearm, and screamed that terrible scream again. Then it froze in that position, jaws agape.

"What is it doing?"

Jay shook his head. "Hell if I know. But there's my target." He lined the crosshairs up on the thing's open gullet, held his breath, and pulled the trigger.

Bascomb-Coombs jittered a few times, then collapsed, his suddenly dead weight more than Peel could hold up. He bent and pulled the knife out of the man's hindbrain, wiped it on the dead man's shirt, and put the blade back into the sheath.

"Sorry, old man, but you mess with the bull and sometimes you get the horn."

The knife was the way to go, all right. He didn't want to attract any attention. Once he was done in here, he would use his gun to do Ruzhyo. He didn't want to get too close to that one.

Now, let's see. There was Goswell, the maid, the cook, and old Applewhite left inside, then Ruzhyo. Huard he could save until last, the boy would never have a clue. Then pop the safe — whose combination he'd had for months — take whatever cash and baubles were there, and a lively stroll through the rainy fields and away. A long and hard day, and it wasn't over yet, but there it was: You did what you had to do, and God save the king.

He went down the hall toward the dining room to have a word with his lordship.

This time, when the rocket exploded, so did the monster's head. Ersatz brain and bone and blood sleeted in all directions, some of it hitting Jay and Saji, but neither of them cared.

"You got it! You got it!"

"You seem awfully joyful for a Buddhist, under the circumstances."

Saji hugged him. "What, for shutting down a computer program? That's all you really did, isn't it?"

"All I did? Hey, this was no ordinary computer program, woman!" But he hugged her back. He had done it. He had redeemed himself. And it felt better than pretty damned good, it felt absolutely great.

Jay Gridley was back!

Chapter 40

The entry team made it to within a few hundred meters of the house without any trouble. Michaels had expected to hear shooting from the perimeter team when it got to the gate, but either they were too far away, or things had gone better there than expected.

In the headset, Howard said, "See anything, E4?"

Fernandez was on point. "Negative, I — wait. There's one just passed under the light by the back door. Looks as if he is walking patrol."

"Copy. Let's move in."

Michaels waited until Howard passed him before he got up from the wet ground where he'd been prone and started moving in a low crouch. Stay low, move slow, that's what Howard had emphasized.

Toni and Cooper followed him, and the tight feeling in his bowels was not altogether from his worry about being shot.

Ruzhyo caught the movement in the field during a lull in the rain. It wasn't much, just a dark shape outlined against the distant outdoor light from a neighboring farm, but it was enough to gain his attention.

A few seconds later, he caught another glimpse of something. Could be a lost sheep, maybe. A calf that had wandered away from its mother. But he didn't believe that. Dark shapes coming across the field in the rain? British assault team was more likely. And sooner than he — and Peel — had expected. Since he hadn't heard any gunfire, Ruzhyo had to assume they had gotten past the guards. Not a real surprise. Peel's men were good soldiers, but the estate was too big for them to cover properly.

Ruzhyo moved deeper into the overhang's shadows, circled away from the house, and headed toward the building that Peel used for an office. He could use that for cover until he saw how many of them had come. Then, if he was lucky, he could still slip away. There could be a dozen or a hundred of them, and without knowing where the gaps were, it would be risky to try to run.

Goswell wiped his lips as Peel came into the room, wearing a rather smug smile. Ah, well. Here we go.

He had sent Applewhite upstairs with the maid and Cook and told them to lock themselves in the upstairs office and stay there until he personally told them to come out. The office door was steel, with a stout lock and a policeman's bar behind it, installed as part of a security room under Peel's aegis. Rather ironic, that.

Now he could finish this unpleasant business. He put his napkin back into his lap and left his hands there with it.

"Do have a seat, Major."

"I think I'd rather stand, if it's all the same to you, Geoffrey."

Ceoffrey? Good God, Peel has gone round the bend. Somewhat flustered at the overly familiar tone, Goswell sought to collect himself. "Did you see Bascomb-Coombs, then?"

"Ah, yes, that I did. I just left him in the study. Quite dead."

"Dead, you say?"

"Yes. A sudden attack of brain fever. Brought on by this." Peel pulled a wicked-looking little dagger from under his jacket and held it up. The bright steel glittered under the lamps of the electric chandelier.

Goswell considered that. "Killed him, did you?"

"I'm afraid so."

"A pity. He was quite brilliant."

"And he was also a psychotic willing to do your bidding and who also tried to have me killed." Peel turned the knife this way and that, looking at the steel almost as if hypnotized.

"Did he? Well, apparently his assassins fared no better than mine, then."

Peel frowned. "Yours?"

"Yes, of course. I'm afraid perhaps you've made a mistake and poor Bascomb-Coombs has been made to suffer for it. It was I who had people trying to kill you, sir."

"But — why?" He seemed genuinely perplexed.

"Really, Peel. For conspiring with that very same Bascomb-Coombs you have slain in my study. Did you think me such a fool that I wouldn't remember that someone must watch the watchers?"

"Ah, so it was you having me followed. And that fellow in the bookstore."

"I am sad that it was necessary. Your father would be most unhappy with you. I thought you were made of better stuff, Major."

Peel laughed. "Well, I've got to hand it to you, Your Lordship, I never tumbled to it being your doing. I stand corrected. And it's not as if Bascomb-Coombs was some innocent who didn't deserve his fate. Though I must say, you are awfully calm for man who is about to have his throat cut. A gentleman to the end, eh?"

"I should hope so. Although I confess that I don't expect that end to occur this evening."

With that, Goswell brought his Rigby double up from his lap and pointed it right at Peel's heart.

The old man was slow and half-blind, and there was a moment there if Peel had moved quickly that he could have gotten around the point-blank line of sight and stabbed Goswell. But such was his shock at seeing the gun come up, so unexpected was it, that he froze. By the time he recovered, Goswell had him covered. He might not be able to hit a rabbit hopping about in his garden fifty feet away, but at ten feet, he'd play hell missing a man-sized target. And a load of even birdshot would be fatal in the right spot.

"Are you going to shoot me?"

"I'd rather not get blood all over the dining room, but if you bat an eyelash crooked, certainly I will. Applewhite would hate the cleaning, but he is very discreet."

"What, then?" "I was rather hoping we could step outside, you could have a final cigar and a brandy or whatnot, and we'd… part company there."

He was serious. Goswell was going kill him. After cigars and brandy.

Not while he had a knife in one hand and a pistol inches from the other hand, the old fool wasn't. He would distract him and bet on his younger reflexes. It was the only way.

"Well, all right. If that's how it is to be. I think I'd like one of the Cubans and maybe a snifter of the Napoleon—"

With that, Peel lunged.

"All I see is the one," Fernandez said. "You want me to put a couple of rounds in him? Pick a spot and say when."

Howard considered his options. The guard had a submachine gun slung and ready, and he might cut loose if he heard a twig snap. Subgun pistol ammo wouldn't pierce their SIPEsuit armor, but it would surely make enough noise to warn people in the house they had company. So would a flash-bang or puke lights. Howard had been expecting a firefight, and in that case, you did what you had to do to control the situation; but so far, with no shooting, it seemed possible they could pull this off without anybody getting blasted. He'd rather do it that way, considering how delicate the politics were. Michaels had gone out on a limb a few times for Howard, the least he could do was return the favor.

"I'm moving up," Howard said. "I'll get his attention. While he's focused on me, you take him out. Nonlethally, if possible."

"Copy nonlethal, E5."

Howard crawled to within twenty yards of the house, then fifteen. The guard was turning and heading in his direction, and he had to attract and keep his attention long enough for Julio to get to him and choke him out.

He needed a noise that would make the guard curious but not afraid. A cat's meow might do it. He did a pretty good imitation of a kitten looking for its mama. Even if the guard was some kind of pervert who liked stomping kittens, he'd have to see it before he did that. Should be enough time for Julio.

"Meow. Mew. Mew. Mew!"

Sure enough, the guard started heading his way.

"Mew! Mew!"

The man grinned. "Kitty! Here, kitty, kitty. Aw, you lost in the rain? C'mere, I'll dry you off."

Good, he was a cat lover.

It was going to work. And it might have, if somebody hadn't fired a shotgun inside the house just then.

The guard spun toward the door, saw Julio coming at him at a dead run, and whipped his gun up.

Well, shit, Howard thought. Then he opened up with his own subgun, a triplet into the guard's back. The guard wasn't wearing armor. He went down.

"Go!" Howard yelled into his comset. "Back to Plan Able!"

Peel looked at the bloody hole in his belly, felt the burn of the lead, and knew he was not going to recover from this gut shot. Thick smoke clouded the lights, the burned-powder smell was awful, and from the floor, he wanted only one thing: to take fucking Goswell with him. He grabbed at his pistol, pulled it free—

Goswell stepped closer and aimed the shotgun at Peel's face.

"Sorry," Goswell said.

The next explosion blew out Peel's lights forever.

Howard rolled through the door and into the kitchen. He came up ready but, save for Julio, already on guard, they were alone. He pointed down the hall, and Julio nodded.

They cleared rooms. When they got to the study, there was a body on the floor next to a portable computer. The dead man wore portable VR gear. They rolled him over and saw his face.

"Bascomb-Coombs," Julio said. "Deader than last week's liberty."

"Yes."

Over the headset, Howard heard somebody outside suck in a harsh breath.

When they got to the dining room, they found the second corpse, a messy one with half its face blasted away, and an old man sitting at the dining room table with an open double-barreled shotgun in front of him. White smoke hung like dense fog in the room.

"You shooting black powder in that thing?" Julio asked.

The old man was Lord Goswell. Howard recognized him from his pictures.

"You don't look like any of the security boys I know. Americans, are you?"

"Yeah, we're new," Julio said. "What happened here?"

"Major Peel went mad, I think. He killed Bascomb-Coombs and came for me. I had to shoot him, I'm afraid. A terrible business."

Peel and Bascomb-Coombs, both dead. Howard shook his head. "Jesus."

Over his com, he heard Cooper echo that word. Or maybe it was Fiorella.

Julio said, "Where is Ruzhyo?"

The old man frowned. "Who? Oh, you mean the new Russian fellow Peel hired? I expect he's around somewhere. He was here earlier."

"Stay here," Howard said. "We'll be back. Heads up out there people, Ruzhyo is still loose."

They headed out. Michaels, Fiorella, and Cooper were covering the back, and Julio said into his com, "E4 and E5 are coming out the back door. Nobody shoot us."

As they stepped out into the yard, the rain stopped. The heads up in Howard's helmet lit with a flash on channel tac-2. He toggled the second com unit on.

"E5, this is P1. We have secured the perimeter."

"Copy, PI. Keep half your unit there, and send a squad our way. We have one unfriendly loose and running around, armed and the worst of the bunch. Stay awake."

"Copy awake, E5."

Howard said, "Split up. Commander, you are with me. Cooper and Fiorella, you are with Fernandez. Do what he says. Let's go find him."

From where he stood, hidden by the outbuilding's corner, maybe five meters away, Ruzhyo could hear the American's voice, though he could not quite make out the words. Five of them, and more out in the fields and doubtlessly on the way. They were wearing body armor impervious to his weapon, and it was unlikely they would flip up their visors or remove their helmets, knowing what had happened to their men who did that the last time they had tried to take him. He was outnumbered, outgunned, and outflanked. Once upon a time, he would have considered those things a personal challenge. Not tonight.

He might bank a shot under a visor with jacketed bullets, but the.22s were soft lead and wouldn't bounce well, though they would spatter if they hit a hard surface. Possibly he could blind one, but that wouldn't do him much good.

The only other weak points were the gloves, which were of thin Kevlar so they could have relatively unimpeded use of their hands. But a broken bone in the hands would hardly be fatal.

No, if he wanted to live, best he take his chances in the fields. Run, and with luck get past the line and away.

He sighed. He could have run a long time ago. He could be back in Chetsnya by now. But that wasn't really home without Anna. Wherever she had been had been his home. With her death, he had been cut loose, adrift, a sere leaf blown by the winds of fate.

He sighed again. Enough of this.

He unfolded the trigger from the umbrella's handle and stepped out from behind the cover of the building and into a cone of light. The five were only a few meters away, backs to him.

"Save yourselves the trouble," he said.

They turned almost as one, all of their guns leveled at him.

"Drop it!" one of yelled. "Drop the — the umbrella?"

He saw them relax slightly. He had given up. They had him.

He snapped the umbrella up and started point shooting.

Howard felt the impact of the bullet on his weapon, and when he tried to return fire, the subgun fired one round, which was way low, then jammed. He let it go and snatched at his revolver.

He heard the others yelling, though he couldn't separate the voices in the LOSIR from each other or the people standing close to him.

"Shit!"

"Fuck"

"Ow!"

The S&W came out of his holster, the cover to the sight popped off, tethered to the holster as it was. He jerked the revolver up, too high, found the glowing red dot and brought it back down.

Why the hell wasn't anybody else shooting at him? He brought the dot down, centered it on the man's chest, and cooked off two rounds—boom! boom! — and watched him fall, crumpling in slomo.

The son of a bitch was smiling as he fell!

Howard ran to the fallen man, stood over him. Both.357 rounds had hit him square in the middle of the chest, heart shots, both, he was out of it, and even if the medics were here, they couldn't fix that.

The dying man looked up at Howard. "Anna," he said. That was all.

It was just about wrapped up. Fernandez came over, carrying the umbrella Ruzhyo had used. He held it so Michaels could see the gun mechanism inside. "Five-shot revolver, see? Ingenious little thing."

Michaels nodded. He also saw the bandage on Fernandez's right hand where the small-caliber bullet had hit it. It hadn't penetrated the glove, but it had smashed against it hard enough to keep him from shooting. Michaels' own weapon had been disabled by a bullet that hit the magazine. Toni had a small wound on her right hand like Fernandez's, and Angela's glove had failed to stop the bullet and it had broken her thumb. Howard's subgun had taken a round against the bolt.

The man called Ruzhyo had hit all five of them hard enough to keep them from shooting back, and it was only Howard's handgun that had finally put an end to it. It was amazing. Nobody here had ever seen anybody shoot so well. If he had had an armor-piercing weapon, he could have killed them all.

"Too bad he wasn't on our side," Fernandez said. "He'd have made a helluva small-arms instructor."

"You sorry he's dead?"

"No. And, well, yeah. Kinda."

Michaels understood that.

"All right. Let's get out of here," Howard said. "The party is over."