Springboard

20

Thorn sat staring at his computer’s holoproj, not really seeing it. This thing with Marissa was definitely throwing him for a loop. He had to acknowledge it, but it was still weird. She was so… different…

He looked up and saw Colonel Kent standing in the doorway.

“Abe. Come in.”

Kent did so.

“So, what’s up?” Thorn said, shifting mental gears.

Kent said, “I’ve got a line on Natadze.”

Thorn blinked. “Really?”

Kent nodded at Thorn’s computer terminal. “Log in to his file, bring up the name Stansell.”

Thorn waved at the computer sensors, then said, “File: Natadze, sub-file, Stansell.”

A webpage blossomed in the air, a holoproj showing several guitars.

“Ask for La Tigra Blanca Tres,” Kent said.

Thorn did.

The image changed. A classical guitar appeared, rotating slowly. The instrument was a pale but rich color, somewhere between tan and off-white on the sides and back, and the color of an old manila folder on the front. The sides and back had patterns that looked like tiger stripes on them.

“Looks almost like it’s glowing,” Thorn said.

“That’s called chatoyancy. Same thing you get off a tiger’s eye gem, or a piece of fine silk. A characteristic of the wood used.”

“Hmm. Interesting.”

“The White Tiger,” Kent said. “And the third one with the name. Made by a guy named Les Stansell, in a little southern Oregon town just north of the California border.”

“Very nice.”

“The wood on the front is Port Orford cedar, that on the sides and back Oregon myrtlewood. Neck is Spanish cedar, the fretboard is ebony, if it makes any difference. Runs about five grand and change for Stansell’s basic models — he’s made a specialty out of these kinds of woods, and the guitars are apparently well thought of by serious players. I checked it out, they go on about tone and sustain and the top opening up fast.”

Thorn nodded.

“This particular one wound up in a specialty shop in San Francisco, and the asking price is ten thousand dollars.”

Thorn waited. “And…?” he said after a moment.

“Not a lot of people walk in off the street and buy ten-thousand-dollar guitars. I sent a bulletin to every luthier and high-end shop I could find via the Net, asking to be informed of sales where the buyer of a classical instrument costing more than five thousand dollars wasn’t somebody known to the seller. I get six or eight hits a day, and I usually am able to run them down and eliminate them — with help from one of Gridley’s guys.”

“And you haven’t been able to run this one down.”

“No. The backwalk runs into a dead end.”

“Could be a lot of things,” Thorn said. “Somebody trying to keep it from his wife, maybe looking to dodge taxes, like that.”

“That’s true. I ran across that once before — some guy bought a spendy guitar and didn’t want his wife to know. But I was able to find him and figure that out pretty quick.”

“You think this is our guy.”

Kent nodded. “I do. More hunch than anything else. The shop owner was contacted via e-mail, the money was transferred from an account in the Bahamas, and the buyer is supposed to drop by and pick the guitar up tomorrow.”

“And you don’t want to have the local FBI team check it out.”

“No. This is… personal. I’d like to be there myself.”

Thorn nodded. “Go.”

“Thank you.”

“Natadze is a bad mark on my record, too, Abe. You need any help?”

Colonel Kent shook his head. “I don’t think so. This time, surprise will be on my side, not his.”

“Keep me posted.”

“I will, Commander.” He paused. “How’s Jay’s son doing?”

“Okay now, so I hear. Not ready to come home yet, but doing better.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes.”

Kent went to the shooting range and put in an hour, burning a hundred rounds through his sidearm. He was going after a professional killer who would be armed and extremely dangerous. The least he could do was make sure his weapon was working properly and he was able to shoot it straight.

He cleaned the piece at the range, reloaded it, and headed home to pack a bag.

The smart thing to do would be to get to San Francisco, assemble a team of FBI ops, plus a squad of the local police SWAT team, set it up, and if Natadze showed and blinked crooked, take him down fast.

But: Natadze hadn’t crept into somebody else’s motel room and swiped a guitar from under their sleeping noses. The man had made Kent look stupid too many times to let it pass into somebody else’s hands.

Besides, Natadze hadn’t killed him. Could have, no question about it, but didn’t, and Kent knew it didn’t have anything to do with Natadze being worried about what one more death would do to his jail time if he was ever caught. The man was a professional hit man, and yet he’d let Kent live.

That had to count for something.

No way was Kent going to respond with a posse of sharpshooters.

No, he was going to be on a plane this afternoon, and scoping out the guitar shop as soon as he could get there. Natadze might decide to come a day early — or a day late. One thing for sure: Whoever picked up that handmade ten-thousand-dollar instrument was going to have Abraham Kent on his tail when he walked out of the store. No question about that at all.

Money could only buy you so much, Locke reflected as he considered the situation. Here he was in a so-so motel in Virginia, in a tiny town that wouldn’t exist were it not for Marines and government workers. He had established that Net Force was indeed linked with CyberNation and actively trying to deal with Shing’s machinations, and when it came right down to it, that was just about all he could expect to do, wasn’t it?

Locke didn’t like trusting people in general, and less so those who did things he himself could not do. Shing was a one-trick pony, but it was a clever trick. Locke — and Wu— had to hope that Shing was sufficiently skilled at it to go against the best security in the world and win. Living on hope was dangerous.

Locke mentally shrugged. His part of this operation was going as he had planned — so far, at least. It would not fail due to mistakes he made. That might not mean much against the loss of the fortune destined for his pocket if it went sideways, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

He couldn’t get inside Net Force or CyberNation to see what they could or could not do against Shing’s attack, not any more than he already had, and the bottom line was, even if he could, what could he do about it anyway?

It was, he decided, time to leave. That there was a frozen body in small packages out there waiting to be discovered did influence his decision a little. He wanted to be far away when it turned up, just in case he had missed something…

Wu passed the envelope full of currency across the desk to Shing.

The younger man smiled. “Thank you, Comrade General.”

Wu smiled in return. “It is nothing. When we are successful, we would not stoop to pick such as this up if it fell from our pockets.” He paused. “Things continue to go well?”

“Yes. The Americans and the French still run around like blind men on a football field, bumping into each other, but seeing nothing.”

“This is good.”

“When we’re ready to unleash the dragon, it will damage their houses so badly they will all but collapse. And they don’t have any idea it even exists!”

So full of himself, Wu thought. Still, if Shing was correct, it would be a great victory. Wu’s heart soared as he thought of how it would be when he made the call to the North Koreans. Not a dragon, perhaps, more like a pack of hungry wolves, but dangerous enough to anyone in their path…

“Well. Go and enjoy yourself at the casinos,” Wu said. “And say hello to that young lady you spoke of.”

“I’ll do that,” Shing said.

They both smiled, and while Shing’s expression was doubtlessly insincere, Wu’s was real.

It was so good to be the man who knew what was going on, really it was.

The pediatrician, a tall, skinny man of sixty or so named Wohler, spoke to Jay in the hall, amidst that antiseptic smell Jay associated with hospitals.

Saji sat with Mark in the private room behind them. Whatever else you might say about it, Net Force had a great health plan.

“It’s too soon to say he’s completely out of the woods, Mr. Gridley, but he’s responded well to the medications and his fever is greatly decreased. I’d like to keep him here for a few more days to be sure everything goes as we hope.”

Jay nodded. “Yes, sure, whatever it takes.” Jay wasn’t happy with the way doctors hedged everything they said, but he supposed he could understand it. They got sued at the drop of a hat, and it was safer if they never promised anything they weren’t positive they could deliver.

Mark’s convulsions had been due to a high fever, and that was because of the pneumococcal pneumonia he had suddenly developed. The onset had been faster than they usually saw, the doctor had said, and no, there wasn’t anything Jay or Saji could have done to protect Mark from it. Yes, there was a vaccine for some strains, but not the one Mark had. The bug that caused it was common, so much so that probably three quarters of the people walking around on the planet had it or some variation of it in their systems, where it was pretty much harmless most of the time. Nobody was quite sure exactly why it sometimes decided to lodge opportunistically in the lungs and start to grow.

The main thing was, Mark seemed to be okay. No apparent brain damage from the high fever, which had registered 106 degrees Fahrenheit when Saji had brought him in.

After Jay had rascaled the traffic lights, it had only taken her a few minutes to make it to the hospital, and Jay had gotten there in under half an hour — the helicopter pilot was a speed demon in that machine, and he’d put it down on the pad outside the ER like a champion gymnast sticking the landing on a dismount.

“Thanks for your help, Dr. Wohler.”

The older man smiled. “That’s what I do, son.”

Back in the room with Saji, Mark slept. Every time the baby twitched, Saji jumped, but they had him inside a clear plastic tent, she wasn’t supposed to touch him, and that broke her heart when he cried.

The last time that had happened, Jay had said, “Enough of this!” He’d gone and washed his hands with the antibacterial soap in the bathroom, put on rubber gloves and a surgeon’s mask like the nurses did, and reached into the tent to comfort his son.

As soon as Mark had felt his father’s hands and heard his voice, he had quieted, even though Jay must have looked scary in the paper surgeon’s mask.

“How’s he doing?” Jay asked his wife.

“Better. He seems to be resting more. What did the doctor say?”

“Nothing really new. I think he believes Mark is going to be fine, but nobody around here will commit to that. I did some research, and baby doctors get sued a lot. Obgyns get hit the most, then pediatricians, followed by orthopedists. Nobody wants to say everything is okay and risk it not being totally okay.” Jay sighed. “He wants to keep him here a few more days,” he finished.

Saji nodded. “That’s fine.”

“Look, why don’t you go home, change clothes, take a shower, maybe a nap, get some books or something? I’ll stay with Mark.”

They had slept on the fold-out couch, which wasn’t particularly comfortable, and washed their faces in the bathroom sink, but they were both tired and rumpled.

“No,” she said. “You go. I can’t leave.”

Jay shook his head. “I can’t, either,” he said.

He took her hand. She squeezed it. They looked at their son, and they worried together.