Changing of the Guard

38

Cox, on his stair-stepper, with a few minutes left to go on the timer, smiled at the memory of the phone call he’d gotten an hour earlier.

He hadn’t laughed when his lawyers told him about the government’s tentative and careful approach, though he had felt like laughing. The government wanted to make him an offer, to spare the country the trauma of a trial…

Cox had played high-stakes poker with some of the best. It had taken him all of two seconds to realize that they didn’t have squat and were trying to bluff him. He hadn’t thought they’d try this, frankly, and it was maybe not so surprising — if you couldn’t get the whole loaf, or even half of it, you might settle for a few crumbs.

Not that he was going to give them even that much.

He had already put his spin docs into play, to scotch the rumors that would certainly show their faces eventually. The war on terrorism wasn’t going as well as it should, the Middle East was still an unhealed wound, the country was on the edge of a recession, and in its desperation, the current administration was looking for high-profile targets it could attack. They needed a victory, anything they could flack into looking impressive, and the little people did love to see a rich and powerful man brought low. The spin docs would lay this out, and it would be the government who came off looking bad — not a man who had just given ten million dollars to various charities, and who employed so many people in so many good jobs.

The fed didn’t have the weight, and Samuel Walker Cox was not a man to flinch if somebody yelled “Boo!”

“Tell them we are not the least bit interested,” he’d told his lawyers. “Make it very clear to them that this is not a negotiating ploy, not an opening gambit. This is the end-game. Make sure that they know they have already lost.”

That would piss them off, but — so what? They didn’t have the cards, and if somebody called your bluff, you lost the pot.

The private scrambled line lit, and Cox picked it up. “Hello?”

“My house has been blown up,” Eduard said.

“That’s terrible.” A beat: “We shouldn’t speak of such things, even on a secure line.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Why ask me? I don’t know. An old enemy?”

“My old enemies are no longer among the living.”

“It is just a house, my friend. We’ll get you a new one.”

There was silence. Then, “Yes, you are right. Forgive me for bothering you with this.”

Somebody had destroyed Eduard’s house? Who? Why? Perhaps it had been an accident?

He looked at the timer. Only a minute left. A house was nothing. He could buy Eduard fifty houses, he could sleep in a different one each week for a year, if he wanted.

Cox hit the stop button on the timer, letting his feet slow to a stop. Someone had blown up Eduard’s house? Who? Why? And more importantly, how?

Cox hadn’t done it himself. He knew that. And he knew that Net Force would never be able to do such a thing. Which meant someone else knew about Eduard, and that just shouldn’t be possible.

“This is serious,” he said. “Go to ground. Give me time to look into this. Then we’ll talk.”

“Yes,” Eduard said, and disconnected.

Cox resumed his exercise. There was only a minute left on the timer, but his thoughts were no longer on the stair-stepper, nor his total victory over Net Force. This was unexpected, and unexpected was always bad.

Natadze sat in the clean car, staring though the windshield at a bus that had stopped to disgorge passengers. Cox had reacted as though he knew nothing about the explosion, but Natadze was no longer fooled. There had been nothing in Natadze’s house to link him to Cox, nothing. But a man that rich had different ideas about property, about the value of things. His only passion was in playing his business games. It was all about the deal for him. Money, possessions, they were just ways to keep score, to show that he was winning. Had Natadze mentioned his destroyed instrument collection, Cox would undoubtedly have offered to buy him news ones. A man like Cox would never understand that there were some things money couldn’t buy. Perhaps it was time for him to learn that.

Natadze felt a great sadness underlying his anger. He remembered a fortune cookie he’d gotten at a Chinese restaurant, in England, of all places, years before. The fortune had said, “Minimize expectations to avoid being disappointed.” That had been in line with his beliefs, and he had kept the slip of paper as a reminder. It was even now in his wallet. But he had come to trust Cox, to expect certain things from him. That had been his mistake. You could depend on no one in the world except for yourself. Sad, but true.

The bus pulled away from the curb, and Natadze followed it. There were things he had to do. Best he get to them.