Changing of the Guard

40

Natadze drove, Cox seated in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac. It was one of the sporty models, smaller and less conspicuous than a limo. They were on a long stretch of relatively empty road on the way to the city; not much traffic at this hour — mostly soccer moms and delivery trucks, and none of them close.

Which was the very reason he had chosen this road.

“We’ve won, Eduard. The government’s offer makes that clear. They don’t have enough to proceed, or they are afraid of upsetting the apple cart, whichever. It doesn’t matter. They can bluster and threaten, but in the end, the victory is ours. They have nothing they can use to trace us.”

Natadze nodded. He was remembering what was left of his guitar collection in the blasted-out basement of his house in Washington. All that carefully aged and worked spruce and cedar and rosewood, gone. He recalled the Spross with the unique pattern in its flame-maple back; the Hauser copy by Schramm, one of the early prototypes; the new Bogdanovich with the natural-wood rosette — all of them and half a dozen others, completely destroyed. Yes, he had recovered the ones in the safe, but he had lost ten concert-quality instruments. For Natadze, it was as if somebody had destroyed a famous painting — even if you owned the picture, it would be a crime against humanity to desecrate it.

He saw the pothole in the road just ahead. Hidden in the trees and bushes a few hundred meters short of that was the little SUV wagon, chosen for its dark green color so as to blend in.

Cox said, “So we go on about our business as usual. Now that all traces of the file are gone except for the one Net Force has, there won’t be any way they can corroborate it. We’re home free, Eduard — whoa!”

Natadze hit the pothole with the right front tire, and the car jounced hard.

The hubcap he had loosened on the front wheel came off, exactly as he’d hoped. It rolled alongside the car for a moment, bounced, then fell over. He tracked it in the rearview mirror.

“Sorry,” Natadze said. He made a show of looking into the rearview mirror. “Uh oh.”

“What?”

“The wheel cover came off. It’s lying in the road behind us.”

He slowed the car, pulled onto the shoulder.

“What are you doing? It’s just a hubcap. Leave it.”

“It will only take a few seconds. Remember the milk truck?”

This had been key in Natadze’s plan, a thing about which he and Cox had spoken recently. Apparently a milk truck had somehow dropped an empty plastic carrier that had not been properly stowed. The driver had noticed it at the time, but he had been in a hurry, and had left it in the road where it fell. It was just an empty crate, not worth stopping for. A motorist traveling the road shortly thereafter had either hit the crate, or swerved to avoid hitting it. The car’s driver had lost control, slammed into a building, and had died. Cox had mentioned the incident to Natadze, railing at how the milk company’s liability insurance would go up because of the lawsuit that was sure to follow, and how hard would it have been for the moronic driver to have pulled over and collected the fallen crate?

Cox remembered. “Ah, good point.”

Natadze exited the car. He smiled at Cox and headed for the hubcap. When he was fifty meters away, he left the road and hurried to a large oak tree. Once he was behind it, he pulled the small radio transmitter from his pocket and flipped the switch covers up — there were two of them, for safety.

He leaned out, saw that Cox was still in the car, and ducked back behind the tree. He pressed the two buttons that sent the signal.

Cox turned to look at Eduard, and saw him leave the road. If the hubcap had rolled off the pavement, then it wasn’t a danger, why was he bothering?

When Eduard ducked behind a big tree, a terrible premonition seized Cox. No! Oh, no—!

He reached for the door handle, jerked on it, screamed, “Eduard, don’t—!”

The sound of Cox yelling his name was blotted out by the explosion, terribly loud in the sunny afternoon. A beat later, car shrapnel sleeted against the tree trunk, hitting hard enough to embed itself into the bark. The bulk of the explosive had been placed in front of the front passenger seat, in the air bag compartment, with another charge under the seat, and a third in the passenger door. The three together were sufficient to blast the car apart, and there was little chance that anybody inside would survive.

Natadze hurried to his hidden SUV, unlocked it, got in, cranked the engine, and pulled out onto the road. He pulled up next to the Cadillac, which was smoking, but not on fire, the vehicle wrenched and twisted as if attacked by an enraged giant. There was no need to get out and check — the man who had been Samuel Cox was certainly dead. One look at the smashed body confirmed that.

Cars were approaching from both directions, and Natadze accelerated and left the scene. It was time to leave the country for a while. South America, perhaps. Or one of the African countries where money could buy privacy. He had more than enough saved to live well for years. Maybe it was time to get serious about music, and to retire from his line of work.

But he didn’t have to decide now. He would have plenty of time to think about it.

He looked into the rearview mirror at the destroyed car dwindling in the distance. “Say hello to the Devil when you see him, Mr. Cox. Ask him how he is enjoying my guitars.”